Richard III

King John wasn't succeeded by the Tudor PR machine. Shakespeare had him bumping off a child as well, but the play isn't as good.

On reflection, the City of Leicester's use of the discovery of the grave to boost tourism (and who can blame them?) reminds me of the use the monks of Glastonbury made of the discovery of King Arthur's grave under the abbey. Of course they salted the grave to make it convincing, but they certainly cashed in. Plus ça change....

Those monks were always great at marketing

I rather envy Leicester. We've got Oliver Cromwell's house.

If you are in Ely, then you also have the of the most beautiful Cathedrals in the world too?

Oh yes. The cathedral is magnificent.

Digressing here- but Ely Cathedral and its unique lantern is a LOT MORE impressive than Leicester's ;). I've done my fair bit with bringing foreign visitors and their money to Ely btw ;)

Ely is truly beautiful at this time of the year with trees in blossom and everything 'greening up' along the riverside.

I miss our cabin cruiser but we're too old and creaky for messing about on the river now unfortunately.

King John murdered Arthur Duke of Brittany when he was 16 years old. He threatened to castrate and blind him, but settled for stabbing and throwing his body in the Seine. Arthur had a better claim than John as he was the posthumous son of John's elder brother Geoffrey of Brittany. Eleanor of Aquitaine championed John and Arthur had to go.

Shame York is missing out on the hysteria surrounding Richad 111. Leicester really have made a meal of it all to boost their cash flow.
Still, I guess York remains much more interesting for tourists than Leicester, so maybe all is not lost.

Well, Shakespeare probably spent most of his working/creative life in London but Stratford has done well out of him being born and dying there. And King Arthur probably never lived at Tintagel but it doesn't stop people going there to see the castle.

trendygran I'm a Yorkist as well. But we're not bitter at all, are we?

With or without Richard York is a wonderful city to visit. Wall to wall history

Yes York is a lovely city. We visited every year when our DC were younger. We knew that visiting families were York's 'cash cows'.

Thank goodness for the National Railway Museum (somewhere free to get out of the rain!). York got lucky there it could have gone to Crewe, Swindon, Derby etc.

Not sure how Leicester 'made a meal of it'. The battle of Bosworth did take place in Leicestershire and Richard was buried in Leicester for over 500 years. Channel 4 did the coverage because the BBC didn't want to know. Channel 4 made a meal of it with too many repeat clips and pointless interviews.

I thought Channel 4's coverage was awful and that the BBC would have done a better job. We Luke York, too, especially the railway museum.

I don't know how to break it to all the people who don't like Leicester but Great Central Railway are hoping to open a Visitor Centre and museum using some of York's 'stock'!!

Who the hell is Luke! We like York!

From London, married to a Yorkshireman ( North Riding), living in Leicester, I think I can safely say 'there's room for us all!' x

I want to know what Leicester railway station did with that apparently enormous model railway carriage they had in the entrance hall before they filled that area with WH Smith and fast food outlets.
It looked big when I was five.
Do any of you Leicester people remember it?

I was most disappointed to find it was not there over 50yrs after I last saw it.

DH remembers it. He seems to think there was an engine there too and it was a large 5 or 6 feet long. No idea where it went maybe to the museum.

I did hear about the GCR getting some of the national collection. They are linking up the line to Nottinghamshire soon too. I don't think they can take it further into Leicester which is a shame.

We had annual membership for the space museum for a couple of years when our younger boys were primary age. Not my kind of thing really and not sure how Leicester got that! Maybe something to do with the university again.

Great Central station was North of the town- now a mixture of garages and other workshops under the railway bridge arches.

And of course Tourism as we know it started in Leicester (and Market Harborough) with Thomas Cook and the Temperance Society. If some meet up in Leicester in May, perhaps a good idea to go and see the ceramic frieze above the Fottlocker shop- the first (or perhaps second, I think the first was in Belvoir Street) ever Travel Agent depicting the first ever passenger train, in an old coal train, with people standing, for a Temperance picinic in 1840is (will have to check date , it escapes me now)- and further travel to Scottland and of course 'my' Switzerland and then SW Spain, Seville, Toledo, Grenada and North AFrica.. Tourism in Switzerland owes everything to Thomas Cook, and so does the ski and walking/hiking industry.

Marmadoit I knew it wasn't a figment of my imagination.

Apples and oranges and all that. York is indeed beautiful and wall to wall history, so is Canterbury, and Cambridge and many more.

But Leicester has got something which is very very different- perhaps the only multicultural town in the UK and perhaps Europe which works so well- perhaps because Leicester has always had a very mixed industry as well as textiles- and because of the large influx of very well edcuated and ambitious Ugandan Asian in the early 70s.

The Golden Mile area North of the town, with its amazing Indian clothes, jewellery, food and spice shops from a huge array of different Indian areas and cultures and religions- is wonderful- and the way the Leicester population takes full part in the huge Hindu Diwali celebrations- give Leicester a vibrancy and dynamism which is just not found in pretty historical towns.

I can't agree that Leicester is the only multicultural town in the UK. Have you ever been to Bradford granjura? It's like being on the sub-continent in large areas of the city. The demographic changes there, in my lifetime, have been dramatic. Some think not for the better.

You missed that bit 'which works so well'. Fully aware of Bradfod and other towns where things are very different. The loss of traditional industries, mining and ship-making, fishing, etc- which concurred with large immigration in Northern towns, have led to a very different situation. Ugandan Asians, also are very different in culture, religion and education to those who now live in Bradford too.

In The Cantle report, 2001, on multi cultural cohesion and racial harmony, Leicester comes out as particularly harmonious City. x