Damn it, let's give Richard III one last, glorious summer

The discovery of Richard III is our Tutankhamun

I’ve got to be honest. With all that’s been happening in the news over the last couple of days, I hadn’t really allowed the full significance to properly sink in. But blimey – it really does look like they’ve found Richard III.

They haven’t found a living, breathing, clubbed-foot dragging Richard, obviously. That would be headline news, not least because of the implications for Royal succession; “Er, Prince Charles, I have a bit of bad news for you sir…”. No, they have found his body.

According to the University of Leicester’s Richard Taylor, who is leading the search: “We are not saying today that we have found King Richard III. What we are saying the search for Richard III it has entered a new phase. The skeleton certainly has characteristics that warrant extensive, further and detailed examination”.

Fine Mr Taylor, but lets cut to the chase; precisely how many battle scarred skeletons with an individual form of spinal curvature, which makes the right shoulder visibly higher than the left shoulder, laid to rest in an unusually formal setting a mere spitting distance from Bosworth field are there littering the car parks of Leicestershire? Stop being modest. You’ve got your man.

It’s unbelievable. Either the guy who faked the Hitler Diaries has really surpassed himself, or surely this is one of the most amazing discoveries in British archaeological history. When they found Piltdown Man every one went nuts, and his was just some jobbing half-ape, and an imposter at that. Hell, I get excited each time Tony Robinson and Mick Aston find some old Roman latrine. This is our Tutankhamun.

Actually, it’s better. This is our Richard III. The Richard III. The guy we all read about. The guy we got dragged to the theatre to see when we were 13. The guy we watched Olivier playing on BBC 2 on a wet Saturday afternoon when Grandstand had gone to the bowls.

My own personal favourite, which is admittedly a little left field, is Richard Dreyfuss in the Goodbye Girl, and his vain battle with crazed director Paul Benedict, who wants him to play Richard as if he was gay: “Just how far off the diving board do you want me to jump?”. “Well, don't give me Bette Midler, but let's not be afraid to be bold."

Just think what place that slender skeleton occupies in our national and cultural consciousness. All this week we’ve been reading dire warnings about a new “winter of discontent”. Prince Harry dropping his pants in Vegas? What kind of misdemeanour is that compared to what we were taught Richard Crookback was up to.

Okay, not everyone is quite grasping the moment. Peter Soulsby, Mayor of Leicester, chose to pay tribute to everyone involved in the dig, including the "social workers who had to do without their car park and will have to do without it for a time longer."

But others have. Earlier in the week Simon Heffer wrote in the Mail, “When the remains of the last Tsar of All the Russias, Nicholas II, and some of his family were found down a disused mineshaft outside Yekaterinburg in the 1990s, the government of Boris Yeltsin held a full state funeral in the cathedral of St Peter and St Paul in St Petersburg. I believe we should do something similar for Richard III, if these bones are his”. Before adding in uncharacteristically understated fashion “I know that would be controversial”.

Why? It’s a brilliant idea. Seriously. Think of where Richard stands. At the centre of our history, our art, our education, our national identity. What a staggering opportunity this represents.

Let’s give him a full, no-holds-barred state funeral. Everyone’s been banging on about preserving the Olympic spirit; well here – DNA tests permitting – is our chance. This is a once in a generation opportunity. In fact, it’s a once in about 20 generations opportunity. Let’s bring our history alive.

Just imagine the crowds that would gather for the chance of watching a 21st century ceremonial to a Plantagenet king. And not just an English king, but thanks to Shakespeare, a global monarch.

Picture the moment. A silent Mall. A slow drum beat. An honor guard, heads bowed in tribute to their leader who fell 500 years before. Richard, making his last journey, laid upon a ceremonial gun carriage, draped in the flag of the kingdom he died fighting for. And ahead of him walks a riderless horse. The horse that in his last moments, he would have swapped that kingdom for.

Bloody hell, I’d miss an episode of Strictly for that. And I bet a few million others would as well.

Okay, there’s the slightly unfortunate business of the Princes and the Tower. But we’ve all made the odd mistake. Plus, if you read Josephine Tay’s the Daughter of Time, it was a fit up anyway.

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt over the past couple of months it’s that – to borrow a phrase from another high profile if much maligned senior statesman – we are at our best when at our boldest. Or more accurately, when we say “damn it, let’s do it”.

Now is one of those moments. Damn it. Let’s give Richard III one last, glorious summer.