Philippa Langley
Author
With an enduring passion to tell stories that challenge our perception of established truths, Philippa Langley is a screenwriter and producer who inaugurated and led the successful archaeological search to locate King Richard III’s grave in Leicester. Her 90-minute documentary, The King in the Car Park, about the search for King Richard, made with Channel Four and Darlow Smithson Productions, was aired on 4th February 2013 and commanded an audience of six million. Based on her Looking For Richard Project, it became the channel's highest rated specialist factual show in its thirty-year history. It won the 2013 Royal Television Society Award for Best History Programme and was nominated for a 2014 BAFTA in the category of TV: Specialist Factual. Her screenplay on the life of King Richard, the most controversial monarch in British history, is based on contemporary source materials from the king's lifetime. She was made an MBE in 2015.
Co-authored with Michael Jones her The King’s Grave – The Search for Richard III was published in 2013 by John Murray in the UK and St Martin’s Press in the USA, now released as major film-tie in The Lost King.
Social Links
Latest Release
The Lost King by Philippa Langley
The official inside story of the life, death and remarkable discovery of history's most controversial monarch.
On 22 August 1485, Richard III was killed at Bosworth Field, the last king of England to die in battle. His victorious opponent, Henry Tudor, went on to found one of our most famous ruling dynasties. Fifty years later, the king's grave was lost, its contents believed to be emptied into the river Soar and Richard III's reputation buried under a mound of Tudor propaganda.
Philippa Langley and Michael Jones trace the remarkable story of the search for the lost king, leading to the incredible moment when the 500-year-old mystery was solved as his remains were uncovered beneath a car park in Leicester. Featuring years of research on Richard III's fifteenth-century life and death, this is a compelling portrayal of one of our greatest archaeological discoveries that shines new light on history's most controversial monarch.
