‘His story just continues to grip people’: Philippa Gregory revisits the history of Richard III for stage

Philippa Gregory: ‘I wanted to write a play about the real Richard.’ Photograph: Chris Leah

There is one king who simply will not lie down quietly and stay in the past. Richard III, the English monarch with perhaps the worst image problem, keeps fighting back, aided by some determined scholars and a group of loyal international supporters.

Now, eight years after the king’s rediscovered remains were reburied in Leicester Cathedral, and more than 500 years after his death on the battlefield, the historian and best-selling novelist Philippa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl and The White Queen, has made the vilified king the subject of her first play. And she believes it could set the record straight at last.