Today – 22 August 2025 – marks 540 years since the Battle of Bosworth, the dramatic clash that ended the reign of King Richard III and put Henry Tudor on the English throne as Henry VII.

I’ve got a slight connection to their story. In November 2019, I was commissioned by Leicestershire Promotions to run a series of creative workshops with pupils at Dixie Grammar School in Market Bosworth. Part of the Inspiring Bosworth project, the idea was to use poetry, stories and artwork to help the children bring Richard III and the Battle of Bosworth to life, and in doing so, raise awareness of a sculpture trail that was then in the planning stage, dedicated to the battle and with specially-created pieces of art sited in a 12-mile loop across the area.

Over several visits, children from every age group of the lower school wrote poems and ‘wanted’ ads, played ‘musical crowns’, and drew images from Richard’s origin story and of the battle itself. I created a short digital film from their artwork, narrated by two of the pupils, and put together an anthology of their creative pieces, both of which featured in the exhibition at Bosworth Battlefield’s Visitor Centre shortly afterwards.

The plans for the Sculpture Trail took a little longer to action than my own three-month project.  Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council, sculptors Stephen Broadbent, Peter Davidson and Ade Wright designed and produced four very different installations to tell the story of the battle, and have installed them in places where key elements of that story occurred. Now completed, the Bosworth 1485 Sculpture Trail is officially launched today – the anniversary of the Battle – allowing walkers  to ‘immerse themselves’ in history as they journey through the fields, church yards and villages of the trail’s route.

In the big scheme of things, the part I played in helping pave the way for the trail was very small. I feel proud of it, never-the-less. The memory of those sessions – and the children’s delighted reactions to my storytelling – are strong.

And six years on, I find myself wondering how many of those children – teenagers, now, for the most part – will walk the newly-completed sculpture trail with their families and remember the stories I wove for them of the real Richard III, in those busy, squeezed-into-the-timetable creative sessions I led in Market Bosworth back in my own historical past.