Search for Richard III makes dramatic new movie

Philippa Langley spent eight years on what should have been an impossible quest: looking for Richard III, the last English king to die in battle. She succeeded in August 2012 when his bones were discovered in an anonymous grave under a slab of asphalt in what is now the most famous car park in Britain on the first day of a two-week dig spearheaded by Langley.

That journey is now dramatized in the movie “The Lost King,” which opens Friday, nearly eight years to the day since the king’s bones were reinterred in Leicester Cathedral, this time in a tomb inscribed with his name and bearing his coat of arms. It is a tale of hope, tenacity and more than a few coincidences, lovingly wrapped in a mystery that features the unlikeliest of detectives: a fiercely intelligent, emotionally raw divorcee living in Edinburgh.

“To go in search of an anointed king in a car park is a bit unusual, shall we say,” recounted Langley in a Zoom interview with the Toronto Star. “But face it, it was the first time there was a search for an anointed monarch.”

Few thought she’d succeed. “I wish you the best of luck. Plenty have tried to find him and failed,” says historian John Ashdown-Hill in the film, while a university administrator slams her application for excavation funding: “It’s got all the hallmarks of being a wild-goose chase.” She was undeterred. “If it’s important, then fight for it. Don’t give in and don’t give up,” Langley said.

Though events in “The Lost King” dramatically rearrange and compress key events into a few months, like Langley’s eight-year search, the film’s creators spent eight years bringing her quixotic quest to the big screen.

The team — director Stephen Frears, and writers Steve Coogan (who also plays Philippa’s ex-husband) and Jeff Pope — was also behind another charmingly eccentric film, “Philomena,” featuring the search by a strong woman, this time for her son, taken from her as a toddler in Ireland. They struggled to find their way into a story that involves archeology, Shakespeare and a man who died five centuries ago, explained Langley.

“These are not entertaining pieces of information,” she admitted with a laugh. “This is all very dry.”

The solution was to bring the medieval king to life as a sounding board for the onscreen Langley (played with delicacy and grace by Sally Hawkins). So there is Richard sitting forlornly outside Langley’s home in Edinburgh, clad in fur-edged robes and a gold crown similar to the one that lay on his coffin in 2015, answering her questions and providing support.

He even goes for one last ride through the streets of modern Leicester, escorting Langley to his newly excavated burial site. The relationship between Richard and Langley might be imaginary, but it also highlights the improbable yet deeply personal nature of the story and, just as Shakespeare’s portrayal of the king as a “pois’nous bunch-back’d toad” caused him to be seen as a villainous tyrant for centuries, the calm, measured portrayal by Harry Lloyd in “The Lost King” shifts that murderous image toward that of Langley’s “loyal, brave, devout, just” monarch. (For the record, he had scoliosis).

What the film also reveals is that Langley’s real-life search was the result of the most improbable alignment of events, each of which could have scuttled the discovery.

In 2004, Langley went to that car park in Leicester because friends from the Richard III Society thought it could mark the location of the Grey Friars Church where the king might have been buried after he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

“I had goosebumps,” Langley said in an earlier interview, “so much so that even in the sunshine I felt cold to my bones. And I knew in my innermost being that Richard’s body lay here.” After that, she turned her research focus from Richard’s life to his death and burial, she recounts in her 2013 book “The King’s Grave: The Search for Richard III,” co-written with Michael Jones, which forms a basis for the film.

Though the area was now in the heart of Leicester, no one had built on the urban site since Richard’s burial, allowing his bones to remain virtually undisturbed in his hastily dug grave for more than 525 years.

Equally crucial, historian Ashdown-Hill had traced Richard’s mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) to the Ibsen family of London, Ont. Of all the descendants of Richard’s extended family, genealogists have discovered only four mDNA relatives: three Ibsen siblings, including Michael, a U.K. cabinet maker who created the new oak coffin for Richard III, as well as a distant Australian cousin, Wendy Duldig. Without that mDNA link, geneticists would not have been able to definitively identify the bones as those of Richard.

And after Langley’s archeological dig was jeopardized when several funders suddenly pulled out, it was saved by Ricardians: members of the Richard III Society, dedicated to both rebalancing his malevolent image and researching his life and times, answered her financial appeal by sending in so much money that they ended up providing the majority of the dig’s financing. “They all pretty much said the same thing, ‘Search for him. Find him. Honour him,’” said Langley.

Victoria Moorshead was a member of the Canadian branch of that society when it contributed to the dig. The Toronto resident even travelled to Leicester for his reinterment in 2014, along with fellow Ricardians.

Before seeing “The Lost King” during its premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, where it garnered acclaim, she confessed to nervousness as to how Richard would be portrayed, having been teased for belonging to the “Richard the Nerd Society.” But after seeing the film twice at TIFF, she’s happy with the results, saying, “I have to admit I got misty-eyed.” She’s planning to see the film again during its public release.

Meanwhile, Langley’s work continues. In 2015, she started a new research initiative called the Missing Princes Project — “big clue in the title,” she notes.

She’s referring to the nephews of Richard III who disappeared from the Tower of London during his reign and whom Richard has long been accused of murdering. Though bones discovered two centuries later are assumed to be the Princes in the Tower, there has been no conclusive identification. Now, Langley raises the possibility she might be able to solve yet another major royal mystery, saying cryptically, “We are going to be making a very, very exciting announcement later this year.”

From anyone else, that would seem like an impossible boast. But Langley has proved that it’s unwise to ever bet against the woman who found a lost king.

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