Philippa Langley

Philippa Jayne Langley (born 29 June 1962) is a British writer, producer, and Ricardian, who is best known for her role in the discovery and 2012 exhumation of Richard III, as part of the Looking for Richard project, for which she was awarded an MBE. Langley has written books and appeared in film-length documentaries on the search for Richard III and was portrayed in the 2022 film The Lost King.

Early life

Langley was born in British Kenya and at the age of two moved with her parents to Blackwell, in Darlington, England. In Darlington, she attended Hummersknott School, and Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, and embarked on a career in marketing, eventually settling in Edinburgh.

Looking for Richard project

Langley's interest in Richard III began in 1998, when she read American historian Paul Murray Kendall's biography of the king, saying: "... it just blew me away. I thought, this is a man whose real story has never been told on screen, never". Langley had been diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis and had abandoned her job in marketing to write a screenplay about Richard III more aligned with historians such as Kendall. Langley formed the Scottish branch of the Richard III Society. In May 2004, she visited various sites in Leicester associated with Richard III, including the three car-parks identified in 1975 as possible burial locations. Langley entered the Social Services car park, and at the northern end felt a "strange sensation" come over her, saying "I knew in my innermost being that Richard's body lay there". In 2005, on completing her first draft, she returned to the car park and experienced the same feeling; when she looked down, someone had painted a reserved "R" over the space; she recounted "it told me all I needed to know".