The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey was a mystery novel in which the main character, Alan Grant, used rather unorthodox research methods in order to prove Richard III’s innocence and prove that Richard III wasn’t the villain that everyday Britain assumed he was. Grant’s main debate showed that there was essentially no reasoning for Richard III to murder his nephews. In order to find out and prove that Richard was a man who should have been on the bench instead of in the dock. Grant scoured history textbooks, books about Richard III specifically, and also obtained the help of an ‘assistant’ of sorts, Brent Carradine. The first item Alan Grant reads over is from a children’s history book, and shows Richard III as nothing more than a murderer, which causes Grant to delve into other, more legitimate, secondary sources in order to discover the truth.
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That is, he chooses to read the tone of the sources more so than the written word. Alan Grant also chose to use the information that he found the most objective, and discarded the sources made by other royals, claiming they were too personally biased against Richard III. While reading Sir Thomas More’s account of Richard III, Grant feels “an aroma of back-stair gossip and servants’ spying,” as the tone of the account, which brought about a kind of sympathy with Alan Grant. Alan grant views the sources as dynamic, they allow him to see many sides to the case, whereas he believes historians “see history like a peepshow, with two-dimensional figures against a distant background.” By bringing a new viewpoint to the sources he deals with, Alan Grant discovers new things about Richard III which proved his innocence in Grant’s
That is, he chooses to read the tone of the sources more so than the written word. Alan Grant also chose to use the information that he found the most objective, and discarded the sources made by other royals, claiming they were too personally biased against Richard III. While reading Sir Thomas More’s account of Richard III, Grant feels “an aroma of back-stair gossip and servants’ spying,” as the tone of the account, which brought about a kind of sympathy with Alan Grant. Alan grant views the sources as dynamic, they allow him to see many sides to the case, whereas he believes historians “see history like a peepshow, with two-dimensional figures against a distant background.” By bringing a new viewpoint to the sources he deals with, Alan Grant discovers new things about Richard III which proved his innocence in Grant’s