Personally speaking, my vote's with Leicester. They should get the bones. York already has enough excitement. It has the Minster, proper walking walls, Clifford's Tower (where you can recreate the slaughter of York's Jews by audio), and it has the Railways Museum which (before they dismantled it) had the manager's office from Wolverton Railway Works plus a reconstructed Stephenson's Rocket.
If that wasn't enough of a celebration of English culture, York also has piles of historic houses, the Shambles, an uncontrollable river, a defunct chocolate-making heritage, and the amazing Jorvik Centre.
At Jorvik, you sit in a trolley like one of those spinning tea cups and trundle past Viking dummies doing what Vikings do, i.e. sell fish, shout at each other, and go to the toilet. Admittedly our last visit was with Shark, Squirrel and Tiger in um, 2006? (Before Blog), but I bet things haven't changed. Squirrel won a tee-shirt in their story writing competition about Eric the Red. Her story was, frankly, crap, like Eric the Red sails away and falls off the world. The end.
Which proves my other point. Not only does York possess fine period pieces in the great commerce of history, they are also very good at promoting it nationally and internationally. They sold their town quite successfully to our Squirrel aged 6, who recalls the tee-shirt fondly. See my point? Do they need a Richard III?
Leicester? Not doing such a great job with their assets (whatever they are). So, if we gave them our dead monarch - and he comes complete with a ready-made global reputation - then surely they can only benefit, no?
Right, as one of the millions of relatives to Richard III, I got my vote in.
Here, have a reenactment of 1485.
No comments:
Post a Comment