JOSEPHINE TEY, THE
DAUGHTER OF TIME (1951)
Alan
Grant, Scotland Yard Inspector (a character who also
appears in five other novels by the same author) is confined to bed in hospital
with a broken leg. Bored and of restless mind, he becomes intrigued by a reproduction
of a portrait of King Richard III brought to him by a friend. He prides
himself on being able to read a person's character from his appearance, and
King Richard seems to him a gentle and kind and wise man. Why is everyone so
sure that he was a cruel murderer? With the help of friends and acquaintances,
Alan Grant investigates the case of the Princes
in the Tower. Grant spends weeks pondering historical information and documents
with the help of an American researcher for the British Museum. Using his detective's logic, he comes to the conclusion that the claim
of Richard being a murderer is a fabrication of Tudor propaganda, as is the
popular image of the King as a monstrous hunchback.
Further,
the book explores how history is constructed, and how certain versions of
events come to be widely accepted as the truth, despite a lack of evidence.
"The Daughter of Time" of the title is from a quote by Sir Francis Bacon: "Truth is the
daughter of time, not of authority." Grant comes to understand the ways that great myths
are constructed, and how in this case, the victorious Tudors saw to it that
their version of history prevailed.
