The day of the Battle of Bosworth

What a week for true Ricardians and those interested in the times of the Wars of the Roses.

While a modern day battle is being fought over where the body of Richard III should lie, tomorrow  is the 528th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth...the battle in which the King was killed and the course of British history was changed forever more.

It was on  Thursday 22 August 1485 that Richard was killed here in Leicestershire, near the village of Sutton Cheyney. He'd ridden out from Leicester the day before with around 12,000 men with the intention of cutting Henry Tudor off from his march towards London.

But this wasn't just another battle...it was the last fought by a King who died in battle and Bosworth is a site of national historic significance, being the location of one of the three most important battles fought on British soil.

And every year, this event is remembered and re enacted by hundreds of men and women who go back and live life in the fifteenth century at the battlefield, and last weekend I joined over five thousand other spectators to watch them.

The re enactors got ready for battle

They lined up waiting for battle, but unlike those men who fought in 1485, they knew they would live to fight another day........

And as the cannons boomed in the distance they watched....



Richard's army began to march 

As did Henry Tudor's men ...

King Richard waited....

As battle began

Until the end...when Richard was killed, his body slung over his horse for the ride back to Leicester, as Henry Tudor celebrated...

But the weekend at Bosworth wasn't just about the battle. It recreated the music and the times of the fifteenth century England, with authentic music

I met Paul Parker, a historical interpreter who was there in the guise of  Captain Mortimer...who was a barber surgeon...and with relish he told me the gory, bloody stories of injury and death on the battlefields of the Wars of the Roses

At battle camp, wood had to be chopped, fires lit ...

Some re enactors are highly skilled ...Stephen Pole is a leathstitch, working in leather and canvas. He makes authentic hand sewn leather bags and purses for other reanactors.During war, he would have been levied by the army, and would have had to leave his shop and go to battle as a camp follower, repairing leather harnesses on the horses, mending tents and soldier's footwear.

He's pictured below with with Ann Laken, who in this century is a gardener, but as a re enactor...she's a master fletcher, handcrafting authentic fifteenth century arrows.

For some , it's never too early to be immersed in the world of the Wars of the Roses....

Also present was someone whose career has taken a different turn because of Richard III...and that's artist Graham Turner. Formerly a motor sport artist, he's now carved out a career as a painter of mediaeval history. He's even become a jouster , wearing a complete suit of replica 15th century armour!

Here's his painting "Challenge in the Mist" ..with Richard at the Battle of Barnet in 1471.

But take a look at this painting, which was unveiled at Bosworth a couple of months ago. It's of Richard, on the field of battle on 22 August 1485. The detail, the colour is all so impressive...I adore it...

So all in all, a wonderful weekend for people of all ages, to not only learn more about Richard III, from experts from the University of Leicester who were pivotal in the discovery of Richard, and from experts such as Dr Phil Stone , Chairman of the Richard III Society ,

and also to become immersed in the world of the Wars of the Roses, both on and off the battlefield.....

A day in a bunker....

Do you know what time you'll be going to work, or what you're going to be doing when you get to work in the mornings?  I very rarely do...my shifts change each week, each day.

Sometimes I know I will be the newsroom or studio....perhaps producing the breakfast or drive programme. Or I may be reading news bulletins late into the night.

If I'm reporting that week, I don't know what story I'll be chasing, or where I'll be going to make prerecorded packages or features. Similarly if I'm reporting live from the radio car, I never know where I'll be sent. And that's interesting!

On Monday. I was the radio car reporter .The shift started at 6am and by 6.15 I was in the studio for a two way with Jonathan Lampon the breakfast presenter. Ten minutes later I was off in the car for a twenty six mile drive along dark, icy roads to the Leicestershire/Lincolnshire border to meet a man in a bunker.

It was a secret bunker , constructed in 1960 at the height of the Cold War when the threat of nuclear war was very real. A frightening time, when British planes were on standby to defend the UK and intercept attacking Russian planes ...or scrambling to attack too.

So why was I in this particular bunker? What was the story of Buckminster Post 62?

Well, Jed Jaggard is a military historian , actor and historical renactor....who takes history into schools and other organisations. He discovered this nuclear monitoring post on google, obtained an indefinite lease on it four months ago, and since then has been cleaning it up.

He's going to run educational visits there...but by necessity  visitor numbers in each party will be small...

 Getting down there was no mean feat. I had to swing my leg over the opening hatch ,put a foot on one bar of the ladder then hoist myself into the hole. Ooh, it wouldn't have been so easy to throw a  wobbly and not bother....but then Jed mentioned that one man who fought in the Second World War, had been down there wearing a neck brace. My pride was at stake. if an injured man in his late eighties could do it, so could I. I lowered my eyes, prayed (because I'm SO accident prone) and climbed down.

Once twenty feet underground, I was in a room measuring eighteen feet by eight feet which would have housed three members of the Royal Observer Corps at any one time. Their mission down there was to monitor the effects of a nuclear blast.

There's still many items of orginal equipment down there. This is a bomb power indicator, which measured the blast waves of a nuclear attack.

There was a cupboard still containing some of the orginal rations - tins of  food, an old chocolate bar, plus an old mini cooker,..a relic from the Second World War.


But considering three people were down there at any one time, there was only one bed....

and one loo...an old chemical toilet.

It's a fascinating place, one of over 1,600 other posts  dotted strategically across the UK. Half were disposed of during the strategic defence review of 1968, but this one remained in operation until 1991. This spot, only nine miles from Melton Mowbray , was a key area during the Cold War.
The next open day is in June, and well worth a visit if you're not claustrophobic and are pretty nimble...

But I don't know how those Royal Corps observers stood it down there during their long shifts. I'd had enough after twenty minutes..and couldn't wait to climb up that ladder to light, and fresh air...

As I'd made my way gingerly down the ladder to the observation post this song was swirling around in my head....I give you...The Jam, and "Going Underground  - such a brilliantly written and executed track which has stood the test of time..