'NEW' EVIDENCE ON THE P*****S IN THE T***R

Or: history as wish fulfilment

My intention for the newsletter this week was to offer up a bit of light relief, and make fun of the guy who got AI to generate some inspirational images of the First Crusade and accidentally made macho/erotic Jesus-He-Man fan fic art.

I was looking forward to that. Low hanging fruit is still fruit.

And AI Godfrey of Bouillon, via @BenZeisloft on Twitter/X.com

But then this morning arrived and what should leap from the pages of every major newspaper, but a story about old evidence presenting as new facts about The Princes In The Tower.

The occasion for this is the forthcoming release of a TV programme and book about the Princes, Edward V and Richard duke of York, who were in all probability murdered at the behest of their usurping uncle, Richard III.

Not totally surprisingly, it all seems rather confused and unlikely, although whether in bad faith or simply naive it is hard to be certain.

As Jonathan Sumption once said of Magna Carta, it is impossible to say anything new about the Princes in the Tower unless you say something mad. And even then it is likely that someone will have said it before.

The ‘new evidence’ presented today - insofar as I can make it out, filtered as it is through newspaper reporting - amounts to a perfect confection of old hat and piping hot horse pucky.