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"Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority."
-- Francis Bacon
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey took me by surprise. A mystery book-- arguably, again in the top ten list of most mystery fans-- which begins when a convalescing detective from Scotland Yard finds something wrong in the portrait of King Richard III of England.



Josephine Tey re-creates one of history's most famous -- and vicious -- crimes in her classic bestselling novel, a must read for connoisseurs of fiction, now with a new introduction by Robert Barnard

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains -- a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England's throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower.

The Daughter of Time is an ingeniously plotted, beautifully written, and suspenseful tale, a supreme achievement from one of mystery writing's most gifted masters.



Well, take a look at the picture to your right. Do you think this is a good man, or a bad man? Or is it simply a man in suffering? Is it even possible to deduce character from the lines on one's face? The real deal is that this man is Richard III, who has been condemned in most history books-- including school textbooks-- as the evil uncle who killed off his two very young nephews in order to usurp the throne of England. Grant (our hero detective)  who suffers from acute boredom in the hospital, decides to dapple into the mystery of this much reviled man.


To the beginners of English history, England was once ruled by the Plantagenet family, which became divided into the two dynastic branches: House of York and House of Lancaster. When Edward of the House of Lancaster died, his brother Richard III (House of York) declared himself as the king regent. Thus began the bitter feud, The War of The Roses-- which interestingly, also serves as the inspiration for George R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Authorities of literature and history writing of the time (like Thomas More and Shakespeare) said that Richard-- evil uncle-- killed off his nephews and usurped the throne, and it was this particular event which threw England into civil war. In the end, the war was won by the House of Lancaster, and a distant cousin of the Plantagenets, Henry VII, came to be King. With Henry VII, the Tudor Era began.

In that sense, the book is not just an investigation of whether Richard III killed off his nephews, but is also a satire on the work of historians. The whole idea of history being "made" by man, not merely recounted by him, and the theory that history is never objective but is always biased-- is called "tonypandy" by Josephine Tey. The Daughter of Time is a work of fiction, but in the way that Tey/ Grant researches the motives, the family lines and the alibis of the possible suspects marks the book equally as a police procedural and research into history. Whereas The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova marks the mad dangerous passion of a historian for his work, The Daughter of Time is a look into how the victors of a war re-write history to suit their own political propaganda and fool generations of men following thereafter. Tey was not the first to point it out, nor the last-- yet English history continues to harp in the same vein. The next time you assume the written word to be true, think again.

I heard the audiobook narrated by Derek Jacobi, and its truly marvellous to hear it in his crispy clear British accent. However, the ebook is also available under Creative Common License at Adelaide EBooks.

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