ALISON ADAMS, CATHEDRAL CANON PASTOR, REFLECTING ON WHAT LEICESTER ACHIEVED
"I'm not saying I'm pro-Richard or not pro-Richard, but Shakespeare was biased, and we've kind of righted the balance sheet a bit.…it's good to settle that, to right that, to rebury someone rightfully and in the right place, really. It allowed Leicester to be proud of Leicester. You know, we see these events that are done at Westminster or St Paul's or... and we did one here. Collectively, we did it, little Leicester did it!"
MATHEW MORRIS, DIG SUPERVISOR, LOOKING BACK ON REINTERMENT WEEK
"That was probably one of the best experiences I've ever had. I think it was an incredibly memorable week. And I think, you know, it looked good. You could sense Leicester was buzzing, absolutely buzzing and, I mean, you I often get asked about the football, and I do genuinely think that Richard III helped with the football, in that it was the reburial week, everybody was on such a high and just transmitted and everything kept on going like that, that confidence seeing us on TV, and thinking, actually we look pretty good on TV, and things like that."
JOHN FLORANCE, FORMER RADIO LEICESTER PRESENTER ON HOW THE REINTERMENT RANKED IN HIS COMMENTARY CAREER
"Well, I've done commentary on all sorts of royal visits. You know, Diana and Charles and the Queen & the Duke of Edinburgh when they visited Leicester. Dozens of these things, but this far and away was the most significant, the most important, in some ways, the most difficult, the one which took so much organising, and it was really exciting. It was really exciting, and it was a privilege to be involved in it, it really was."
SALLY HENSHAW, SECRETARY OF THE LEICESTERSHIRE BRANCH OF THE RICHARD III SOCIETY, ON REHABILITATING RICHARD III
"Finding Richard and giving him a decent burial was the icing on the cake. But there are still an awful lot of people out there who say, for instance, well, Shakespeare said... So, it must be right. There are still an awful lot of people who do not have a very good view of Richard, who have read Thomas More or Shakespeare and that that's it. So, yes, there's still an awful lot of work to do."
MANDY FORD, FABRIC WORKSTREAM LEAD AND FORMER CHAIR OF CATHEDRAL FABRIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE, REFLECTING ON HOW THE DISCOVERY OF RICHARD WAS A CHALLENGE FOR THE RICHARD III SOCIETY
"It's always struck me that for those for whom the project of discovering Richard III had been a lifelong passion, the fact that that they did indeed find Richard, and that the consequence of that was that their private passions became public property was, you know... I recognised there was a huge amount of loss in that."
DAVID MONTEITH, FORMER DEAN OF LEICESTER, ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PHILIPPA LANGLEY
"It couldn't have happened without all the people that were involved, all the strong personalities, you know. I mean, I often say, Philippa Langley in particular, whose tenacity set the whole thing and made sure it happened, it would not have happened without Philippa, without question. It needed somebody of that commitment and tenacity to do it."
DAVID MONTEITH, FORMER DEAN OF LEICESTER, ON HIS FAVOURITE MOMENT
"For me, the best moment was when I was allowed to go and see the remains of Richard III with Bishop Tim Stevens privately in the University, and to get to hear Turi King and Richard Buckley and so on describe to me in detail what was in front of me, and seeing the impact of the wounds, and seeing the impact of the scoliosis and seeing this gracile skeleton, this very, very light boned man who, who yet is, described by his contemporaries as being brave and in the thick of battle and so on. Having that experience, and literally touching history in that kind of way. And then I remember parking the car on the north side of the Cathedral and being slightly dazed by the whole experience, and literally coming down the street was a guy in a wheelchair who was a modern-day veteran who had lost his legs in Afghanistan. And he didn't know that I had just come from seeing Richard III, but he was just asking me the way. He said, you know, where is wherever, where's the Guildhall and…. but there was this encounter between this medieval battle victim and this 21st century battle victim, which kind of, you know, sticks with me. And I had been thinking about those ideas in a kind of intellectual way, but suddenly I was gripped by it in a very experiential way."
ROSIE HUGHES, FLORAL DESIGNER, REFLECTING ON HER CONTRIBUTION
"I mean, there are two that are at the top of my list, and one is to organise the nosegays for Her Majesty the Queen, which I've done for a long time now, and also recently for the King. And then there's obviously this one, Richard III, and so not everybody gets to do something for a king one week, that was at Leicester, the same year, the week later, do the Maundy nosegays for the Queen in Sheffield. Something for a King and something for a Queen!"
JIM BUTLER, FORMER EVENTS LEAD FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER, ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF THE REINTERMENT
"It did literally put Leicester on the map. I went to America in 2018 and like, "Where you from, Leicester?" No one knows, unless, if people knew where Leicester was, they either said Richard III or Leicester City Football Club, because it's a year after, you know, it's two years after we won the Premiership. It put us on the map, both those two things put us on the map. And it's, you know… it's about how the city now continues to maximize that."
JOHANNES ARENS, FORMER CANON PRECENTOR OF LEICESTER CATHEDRAL, ON HOW THE REINTERMENT HAS ALTERED PEOPLE'S PERCEPTION OF LEICESTER
"Richard III gave people a sense that this is a much older place, and that they live in a place with history which is grounded; it goes back to Roman times. Huge interest, suddenly, of a population of Leicester, we are not just dislocated foreigners, but we live in a place which has roots, and then the football happened, which is a sort of cross shape, yeah, you go deep into the past, and suddenly you are somewhere and people see you and say, wow, you're amazing, and you are grounded in the past at the same time."
