Like so many today I've been enthralled by the confirmation that for several centuries, the body of Richard the Third - the villain, the scheming scuttling monster of Shakespeare's eponymous drama - has lain in an untidy and crude grave underneath that most British of things, the car park.

It's that moment again, where we're able through dogged and scrupulous forensic archeology to lean back and meet the past. Meet the ancestors; and, in this case, see the bones of not just an historical figure, but someone whose cultural power has echoed down the centuries. I am amazed.

The one thing that does stand out for me is the tremendous torsion of his spine, almost an S shape, or the barb of a deformed hook. Life must have been anything but quiet for Richard; he must have been mocked even if it was silently, voices that would n't dare speak, but eyes that certainly could, must have left their mark. Unusual body types still generate stares even today in these more enlightened, sympathetic times. For him it must have been hell.