Battle of Bosworth Field
Part of the Wars of the Roses
Battle of Bosworth Field, as depicted by Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740–1812)
Date 22 August 1485 Location Near Ambion Hill, south of Market Bosworth, England Result Decisive Lancastrian victory End of Wars of the Roses House of Tudor reign
Belligerents
House of York	House of Lancaster	Stanley family
Commanders and leaders
Richard III of England †	Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond	Thomas Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley
Strength
10,000	5,000	6,000
Casualties and losses
1,000	100	Unknown

The Battle of Bosworth Field (or the Battle of Bosworth) was the penultimate battle of the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the House of Lancaster and the House of York that raged across England in the latter half of the 15th century. Fought on 22 August 1485, the battle was won by the Lancastrians. Their leader Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, became the first English monarch of the Tudor dynasty by his victory and subsequent marriage to a Yorkist princess. His opponent Richard III, the last king of the House of York, was killed in the battle. Historians consider Bosworth Field to mark the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, making it one of the defining moments of English history.

Richard's reign began in 1483 when he seized the throne from his twelve-year-old nephew Edward V. The boy and his younger brother soon disappeared, to the distress of many, and Richard's support was further eroded by rumours of his involvement in the death of his wife. Across the English Channel Henry Tudor, a descendant of the greatly diminished House of Lancaster, seized on Richard's difficulties and laid claim to the throne. Henry's first attempt to invade England in 1483 was frustrated by a storm, but his second arrived unopposed on 1 August 1485 on the southwest coast of Wales. Marching inland, Henry gathered support as he made for London. Richard hurriedly mustered his troops and intercepted Henry's army south of the town of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. Lord Thomas Stanley and Sir William Stanley also brought a force to the battlefield, but held back while they decided which side it would be more advantageous to support.

Richard divided his army, which outnumbered Henry's, into three groups (or "battles"). One was assigned to the Duke of Norfolk and another to the Earl of Northumberland. Henry kept most of his force together and placed it under the command of the experienced Earl of Oxford. Richard's vanguard, commanded by Norfolk, attacked but struggled against Oxford's men, and some of Norfolk's troops fled the field. Northumberland took no action when signalled to assist his king, so Richard decided to gamble everything on a charge across the battlefield to kill Henry and end the fight. Seeing the king's knights separated from his army, the Stanleys intervened; Sir William led his men to Henry's aid, surrounding and killing Richard. After the battle, Henry was crowned king on Crown Hill.

Henry hired chroniclers to portray his reign favourably; the Battle of Bosworth Field was popularised to represent his Tudor dynasty as the start of a new age. From the 15th to 18th centuries the battle was glamorised as a victory of good over evil, and as the climax of William Shakespeare's play about Richard's rise and fall, it provides a focal point for critics in later film adaptations. The exact site of the battle is disputed because of the lack of conclusive data, and memorials have been erected at different locations. The Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre was built, in 1974, on a site chosen based on a theory that has been challenged by several scholars and historians in the following years. In October 2009, a team of researchers, who had performed geological surveys and archaeological digs in the area from 2003, suggested a location two miles (3 km) southwest of Ambion Hill.

Background[link]

Bosworth

Blore Heath

Barnet

Stoke

Tewkesbury

Berwick

London

York

Plymouth

Poole

Wem

Northumberland

Shrewsbury

Milford Haven

Locations:

– Battle of Bosworth Field; – other battles; – other places

During the 15th century, civil war raged across England as the Houses of York and Lancaster fought each other for the English throne. In 1471, the Yorkists defeated their rivals in the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury. The Lancastrian King Henry VI and his only son, Edward of Lancaster, died in the aftermath of the Battle of Tewkesbury. Their deaths left the House of Lancaster with no direct claimants to the throne. The Yorkist king, Edward IV, was in complete control of England.^[1] He attainted those who refused to submit to his rule, such as Jasper Tudor and his nephew Henry, naming them traitors and confiscating their lands. The Tudors tried to flee to France but strong winds forced them to land in Brittany, then a semi-independent duchy, where they were taken into the custody of Francis II, Duke of Brittany.^[2] Henry's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was a distant descendant of John of Gaunt, uncle of King Richard II and father of King Henry IV.^[3] The Beauforts were originally bastards, but Henry IV legitimated them on the condition that their descendants were not eligible to inherit the throne.^[4] Henry Tudor, the only remaining Lancastrian noble with a trace of the royal bloodline, had a weak claim to the throne,^[1] and Edward regarded him as "a nobody".^[5] Francis, however, viewed Henry as a valuable tool to bargain for England's aid and kept the Tudors under his protection.^[5]

Edward IV died twelve years later on 9 April 1483.^[6] His twelve-year-old elder son succeeded him as King Edward V; the younger son, nine-year-old Richard of Shrewsbury, was next in line to the throne. Edward V was too young to rule and a Royal Council was established to rule the country until the king's coming of age. The royal court was worried when they learned that the Woodvilles, relatives of the Queen Mother Elizabeth, were plotting to seize control of the council.^[7] Having offended many in their quest for wealth and power, the Woodville family was not popular.^[8] To frustrate the Woodvilles' ambitions, Lord Hastings and other members of the council turned to the new king's uncle—Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Edward IV. The courtiers urged Gloucester to assume the role of Protector quickly, as had been previously requested by his now dead brother.^[9] On 29 April, Gloucester, accompanied by a contingent of guards and Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, took Edward V into custody and arrested several prominent members of the Woodville family.^[10] After bringing the young king to London, Gloucester had the Woodvilles executed, without trial, on charges of treason.^[11]

On 13 June, Gloucester accused Hastings of plotting with the Woodvilles and had him beheaded.^[12] Nine days later, Gloucester convinced Parliament to declare the marriage between Edward IV and Elizabeth illegal, rendering their children illegitimate and disqualifying them from the throne.^[13] With his nephews out of the way, he was next in the line of succession and was proclaimed King Richard III on 26 June.^[14] The timing and extrajudicial nature of the deeds done to obtain the throne for Richard won him no popularity, and rumours that spoke ill of the new king spread throughout England.^[15] After they were declared bastards, the two princes were confined in the Tower of London and never seen in public again.^[16] Except for those in the north, the people of England firmly believed that Richard, the "tyrant",^[17] had murdered his nephews.^[18]

Discontent with Richard's actions manifested itself in the summer after he took control of the country, as a conspiracy emerged to displace him from the throne. The rebels were mostly loyalists to Edward IV, who saw Richard as a usurper.^[19] Their plans were co-ordinated by a Lancastrian, Henry's mother Lady Margaret, who was promoting her son as a candidate for the throne. The highest-ranking conspirator was Buckingham. No chronicles tell of the duke's motive in joining the plot, although historian Charles Ross proposes that Buckingham was trying to distance himself from a king who was becoming increasingly unpopular with the people.^[20] Michael Jones and Malcolm Underwood suggest that Margaret deceived Buckingham into thinking the rebels supported him to be king.^[21]

Elizabeth of York: rumours of her marriage launched Henry's invasion.

The plan was to stage uprisings within a short time in southern and western England, overwhelming Richard's forces. Buckingham would support the rebels by invading from Wales, while Henry came in by sea.^[22] Bad timing and weather wrecked the plot. An uprising in Kent started 10 days prematurely, alerting Richard to muster the royal army and take steps to put down the insurrections. Richard's spies informed him of Buckingham's activities, and the king's men captured and destroyed the bridges across the River Severn. When Buckingham and his army reached the river, they found it swollen and impossible to cross because of a violent storm that broke on 15 October.^[23] Buckingham was trapped and had no safe place to retreat; his Welsh enemies seized his home castle after he had set forth with his army. The duke abandoned his plans and fled to Wem, where he was betrayed by his servant and arrested by Richard's men. On 2 November, he was executed.^[24] Henry had attempted a landing on 10 October (or 19 October), but his fleet was scattered by a storm. He reached the coast of England (at either Plymouth or Poole), and a group of soldiers hailed him to come ashore. They were, in truth, Richard's men, prepared to capture Henry once he set foot on English soil. Henry was not deceived and returned to Brittany, abandoning the invasion.^[25] Without Buckingham or Henry, the rebellion was easily crushed by Richard.^[24]

The survivors of the failed uprisings fled to Brittany, where they openly supported Henry's claim to the throne.^[26] At Christmas, Henry Tudor swore an oath to marry Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth of York, to unite the warring houses of York and Lancaster.^[27] Henry's rising prominence made him a great threat to Richard, and the Yorkist king made several overtures to the Duke of Brittany to surrender the young Lancastrian. Francis refused, holding out for the possibility of better terms from Richard.^[28] In mid-1484, Francis was incapacitated by illness and while recuperating, his treasurer, Pierre Landais, took over the reins of government. Landais reached an agreement with Richard to send back Henry and his uncle in exchange for military and financial aid. John Morton, a bishop of Flanders, learned of the scheme and warned the Tudors, who fled to France.^[29] The French court allowed them to stay; the Tudors were useful pawns to ensure that Richard's England did not interfere with French plans to annex Brittany.^[30] On 16 March 1485, Richard's queen, Anne Neville, died,^[31] and rumours spread across the country that she was murdered to pave the way for Richard to marry his niece, Elizabeth. The gossip alienated Richard from some of his northern supporters,^[32] and upset Henry across the English Channel.^[33] The loss of Elizabeth's hand in marriage could unravel the alliance between Henry's supporters who were Lancastrians and those who were loyalists to Edward IV.^[34] Anxious to secure his bride, Henry assembled approximately 2,000 men and set sail from France on 1 August.^[35]

Commanders[link]

A stained-glass window in St. James Church, Sutton Cheney, commemorates the Battle of Bosworth Field and the leaders of the combatants, Richard III (left) and Henry VII (right).

By the 15th century, English chivalric ideas of selfless service to the king had been corrupted.^[36] Armed forces were mostly raised through musters in individual estates; every able-bodied man had to respond to their lord's call to arms, and each noble had exclusive authority over his militia. Although a king could raise personal militia from his lands, he could only muster a significantly large army through the support of his nobles. Richard, like his predecessors, had to win over these men by granting gifts and maintaining cordial relationships.^[37] Powerful nobles could demand greater incentives to remain on the liege's side or else they might turn against him.^[38] Three groups, each with its own agenda, stood on Bosworth Field: Richard III and his Yorkist army; his challenger, Henry Tudor, who championed the Lancastrian cause; and the fence-sitting Stanleys.^[39]

Yorkist[link]

Small and slender, Richard III did not have the robust physique associated with many of his Plantagenet predecessors.^[40] However, he enjoyed rough sports and activities that were considered manly.^[41] His performances on the battlefield impressed his brother greatly, and he became Edward's right hand man.^[42] During the 1480s, Richard defended the northern borders of England. In 1482, Edward charged him to lead an army into Scotland with the aim of replacing King James III with the Duke of Albany.^[43] Richard's army broke through the Scottish defences and occupied the capital, Edinburgh, but Albany decided to give up his claim to the throne in return for the post of Lieutenant General of Scotland. As well as obtaining a guarantee that the Scottish government would concede territories and diplomatic benefits to the English crown, Richard's campaign retook the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which the Scots had conquered in 1460.^[44] Edward was not satisfied by these gains,^[17] which, according to Ross, could have been greater if Richard had been resolute enough to capitalise on the situation while in control of Edinburgh.^[45] In her analysis of Richard's character, Christine Carpenter sees him as a soldier who was more used to taking orders than giving them.^[46] However, he was not averse to displaying his militaristic streak; on ascending the throne he made known his desire to lead a crusade against "not only the Turks, but all [his] foes".^[41]

Richard's most loyal subject was John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk.^[47] The duke served Richard's brother for many years and was one of Edward IV's closer confidantes.^[48] He was a military veteran, having fought in the Battle of Towton in 1461 and served as Hastings' deputy at Calais in 1471.^[49] Ross speculates that he may have borne a grudge against Edward for depriving him of a fortune. Norfolk was due to inherit a share of the wealthy Mowbray estate on the death of eight-year-old Anne de Mowbray, the last of her family. However, Edward convinced Parliament to circumvent the law of inheritance and transfer the estate to his younger son, who was married to Anne. Consequently, Howard supported Richard III in deposing Edward's sons, for which he received the dukedom of Norfolk and his original share of the Mowbray estate.^[50]

Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, also supported Richard's seizure of the throne of England. The Percys were loyal Lancastrians, but Edward IV eventually won the earl's allegiance. Northumberland had been captured and imprisoned by the Yorkists in 1461, losing his titles and estates; however, Edward released him eight years later and restored his earldom.^[51] From that time Northumberland served the Yorkist crown, helping to defend northern England and maintain its peace.^[52] Initially the earl had issues with Richard III as Edward groomed his brother to be the leading power of the north. Northumberland was mollified when he was promised he would be the Warden of the East March, a position that was formerly hereditary for the Percys.^[53] He served under Richard during the 1482 invasion of Scotland, and the allure of being in a position to dominate the north of England if Richard went south to assume the crown was his likely motivation for supporting Richard's bid for kingship.^[54] However, after becoming king, Richard began moulding his nephew, John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, to manage the north, passing over Northumberland for the position. According to Carpenter, although the earl was amply compensated he despaired of any possibility of advancement under Richard.^[55]

Lancastrian[link]

Henry Tudor was unfamiliar with the arts of war and a stranger to the land he was trying to conquer. He spent the first fourteen years of his life in Wales and the next fourteen in Brittany and France.^[56] Slender but strong and decisive, Henry lacked a penchant for battle and was not much of a warrior; chroniclers such as Polydore Vergil and ambassadors like Pedro de Ayala found him more interested in commerce and finance.^[57] Having not fought in any battles,^[58] Henry recruited several experienced veterans on whom he could rely for military advice and the command of his armies.^[59]

John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, was Henry's principal military commander.^[60] He was adept in the arts of war. At the Battle of Barnet, he commanded the Lancastrian right wing and routed the division opposing him. However, as a result of confusion over identities, Oxford's group came under friendly fire from the Lancastrian main force and retreated from the field. The earl fled abroad and continued his fight against the Yorkists, raiding shipping and eventually capturing the island fort of St Michael's Mount in 1473. He surrendered after receiving no aid or reinforcement, but in 1484 escaped from prison and joined Henry's court in France, bringing along his erstwhile gaoler Sir James Blount.^[61] Oxford's presence raised morale in Henry's camp and troubled Richard III.^[62]

Stanleys[link]

In the early stages of the Wars of the Roses the Stanleys of Cheshire were predominantly Lancastrians.^[63] Sir William Stanley, however, was a staunch Yorkist supporter, fighting in the Battle of Blore Heath in 1459 and helping Hastings to put down uprisings against Edward IV in 1471.^[64] When Richard took the crown, Sir William showed no inclination to turn against the new king, refraining from joining Buckingham's rebellion, for which he was amply rewarded.^[65] Sir William's elder brother, Thomas Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley, was not as steadfast. By 1485, he had served three kings, namely Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III. Lord Stanley's skilled political manoeuvrings—vacillating between opposing sides until it was clear who would be the winner—gained him high positions;^[66] he was Henry's chamberlain and Edward's steward.^[67] His non-committal stance, until the crucial point of a battle, earned him the loyalty of his men, who felt he would not needlessly send them to their deaths.^[62]

Even though Lord Stanley had served as Edward IV's steward, his relations with the king's brother, the eventual Richard III, were not cordial. The two had conflicts with each other that erupted into violence around March 1470.^[68] Furthermore, having taken Lady Margaret as his second wife in June 1472,^[69] Stanley was Henry Tudor's stepfather, a relationship which did him nothing to win Richard's favour. Despite these differences, Stanley did not join Buckingham's revolt in 1483.^[65] When Richard executed those conspirators who were unable to flee England,^[24] he spared Lady Margaret. However, he declared her titles forfeit, and transferred her estates to Stanley's name, to be held in trust for the Yorkist crown. Richard's act of mercy was calculated to reconcile with Stanley,^[21] but it may have been to no avail—Carpenter has identified a further cause of friction in Richard's intention to reopen an old land dispute that involved Thomas Stanley and the Harrington family.^[70] Edward IV had ruled the case in favour of Stanley in 1473,^[71] but Richard planned to overturn his brother's ruling and give the wealthy estate to the Harringtons.^[70] Wary of Stanley, Richard took his son, Lord Strange, as hostage to discourage him from joining Henry.^[72]

Prelude[link]

Early battle (a scenario based on historical interpretations): elements of Richard's army charged down Ambion Hill to engage Henry's forces on the plain. The Stanleys stood at the south, observing the situation.

Henry's crossing of the English Channel in 1485 was without incident. He sailed from Harfleur on 1 August and, with fair winds, landed at Mill Bay on the north side of Milford Haven on 7 August, easily capturing nearby Dale Castle.^[73] Although hailed by contemporary Welsh bards as the native prince to bring their country back to glory,^[74] Henry received a muted response from the local population. No joyous welcome awaited him on shore, and few individual Welshmen joined his army as it marched inland.^[75] Historian Geoffrey Elton suggests only Henry's ardent supporters felt pride over his Welsh blood.^[76] It was a different story when Henry moved to Haverfordwest, the county town of Pembrokeshire. Richard's lieutenant in South Wales, Sir Walter Herbert, failed to move against Henry, and two of his officers, Richard Griffith and Evan Morgan, deserted to Henry with their men.^[77] Another prominent local figure, Rhys Fawr ap Maredudd, also joined Henry.^[78]

However, the most important defector to Henry in this early stage of the campaign was probably Rhys ap Thomas, who was the leading figure in West Wales.^[77] Richard had appointed Rhys Lieutenant in West Wales for his refusal to join Buckingham's rebellion, asking that he surrender his son Gruffydd ap Rhys ap Thomas as surety, although by some accounts Rhys had managed to evade this condition. However, Henry successfully courted Rhys, offering the lieutenancy of all Wales in exchange for his fealty. Henry marched via Aberystwyth while Rhys followed a more southerly route, recruiting 500 Welshmen en route to swell Henry's army when they reunited at Welshpool.^[79] By 15 or 16 August, Henry and his men had crossed the English border, making for the town of Shrewsbury.^[78]

Since 22 June 1485 Richard had been aware of Henry's impending invasion, and had ordered his lords to maintain a high level of readiness.^[80] News of Henry's landing reached Richard on 11 August, but it took three to four days for his messengers to notify his lords of their king's mobilisation. On 16 August, the Yorkist army started to gather; Norfolk set off for Leicester, the assembly point, that night. The city of York, a traditional stronghold of Richard's family, asked the king for instructions, and receiving a reply three days later sent 80 men to join the king. Simultaneously Northumberland, whose northern territory was the most distant from the capital, had gathered his men and ridden to Leicester.^[81]

Although London was his goal,^[82] Henry did not move directly towards the city. After resting in Shrewsbury, his forces went eastwards and picked up Gilbert Talbot and other English allies, including deserters from Richard's forces. Although its size had increased substantially since the landing, Henry's army was not yet large enough to contend with the numbers Richard could muster. Henry's pace through Staffordshire was slow, delaying the confrontation with Richard so that he could gather more recruits to his cause.^[83] Henry had been communicating on friendly terms with the Stanleys for some time before setting foot in England,^[34] and the Stanleys had mobilised their forces on hearing of Henry's landing. They ranged themselves ahead of Henry's march through the English countryside,^[84] meeting twice in secret with Henry as he moved through Staffordshire.^[85] At the second of these, at Atherstone in Warwickshire, they conferred "in what sort to arraign battle with King Richard, whom they heard to be not far off".^[86] On 21 August, the Stanleys were making camp on the slopes of a hill north of Dadlington, while Henry encamped his army at White Moors to the northwest of their camp.^[87]

On 20 August, Richard reached Leicester, joining Norfolk. Northumberland arrived the following day. The royal army proceeded westwards to intercept Henry's march on London. Passing Sutton Cheney, Richard moved his army towards Ambion Hill—which he thought would be of tactical value—and made camp on it.^[87] Richard's sleep was not peaceful and, according to the Croyland Chronicle, in the morning his face was "more livid and ghastly than usual".^[88]

Engagement[link]

Late battle (a scenario based on historical interpretations): Richard led a small group of men around the main battle and charged Henry, who was moving towards the Stanleys. William Stanley rode to Henry's rescue.

The Yorkist army, numbering about 10,000 men, deployed on the hilltop^[89][90] along the ridgeline from west to east. Norfolk's group (or "battle" in the parlance of the time) of spearmen stood on the right flank, protecting the cannon and about 1,200 archers. Richard's group, comprising 3,000 infantry, formed the centre. Northumberland's men guarded the left flank; he had approximately 4,000 men, many of them mounted.^[91] Standing on the hilltop, Richard had a wide, unobstructed view of the area. He could see the Stanleys and their 6,000 men holding their position at Dadlington Hill, while to the southwest was Henry's army.^[92]

Henry had very few Englishmen—fewer than a thousand—in his army. Between three and five hundred of them were exiles who had fled from Richard's rule,^[93] and the remainder were Talbot's men and recent deserters from Richard's army. Historian John Mackie believes that 1,800 French mercenaries, led by Philibert de Chandée, formed the core of Henry's army.^[94] John Mair, writing thirty-five years after the battle, claimed that this force contained a significant Scottish component,^[95] and this claim is accepted by some modern writers,^[96] but Mackie reasons that the French would not have released their elite Scottish knights and archers, and concludes that there were probably few Scottish troops in the army, although he accepts the presence of captains like Bernard Stewart, Lord of Aubigny.^[94][95] In total, Henry's army was around 5,000 strong,^[89][90] a substantial portion of which was made up by the recruits picked up in Wales. Rhys ap Thomas's Welsh force was described as being large enough to have "annihilated" the rest of Henry's force.^[97]

In their interpretations of the vague mentions of the battle in the old text, historians placed areas near the foot of Ambion Hill as likely regions where the two armies clashed, and thought up possible scenarios of the engagement.^{[98][99][100]} In their recreations of the battle, Henry started by moving his army towards Ambion Hill where Richard and his men stood. As Henry's army advanced past the marsh at the southwestern foot of the hill, Richard sent a message to Stanley, threatening to execute his son, Strange, if Stanley did not join the attack on Henry immediately. Stanley replied that he had other sons. Incensed, Richard gave the order to behead Strange but his officers temporised, saying that battle was imminent, and it would be more convenient to carry out the execution afterwards.^[101] Henry had also sent messengers to Stanley asking him to declare his allegiance. The reply was evasive—the Stanleys would "naturally" come, after Henry had given orders to his army and arranged them for battle. Henry had no choice but to confront Richard's forces alone.^[39]

Well aware of his own military inexperience, Henry handed command of his army to Oxford and retired to the rear with his bodyguards. Oxford, seeing the vast line of Richard's army strung along the ridgeline, decided to keep his men together instead of splitting them into the traditional three battles: vanguard, centre, and rearguard. He ordered the troops to stray no further than 10 feet (3.0 m) from their banners, fearing that they would become enveloped. Individual groups clumped together, forming a single large mass flanked by horsemen on the wings.^[102]

The clash between Richard's and Henry's armies as depicted by Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre

The Lancastrians were harassed by Richard's cannon as they manoeuvred around the marsh, seeking firmer ground.^[103] Once Oxford and his men were clear of the marsh, Norfolk's battle and several contingents of Richard's group started to advance. Hails of arrows showered both sides as they closed. Oxford's men proved the steadier in the ensuing hand-to-hand combat; they held their ground and several of Norfolk's men, recruits from southern England, fled the field.^[104] Recognising that his force was at a disadvantage, Richard signalled for Northumberland to assist but Northumberland's group showed no signs of movement. Historians, such as Horrox and Pugh, believe Northumberland chose not to aid his king for personal reasons.^[105] Ross doubts the aspersions cast on Northumberland's loyalty, suggesting instead that Ambion Hill's narrow ridge hindered him from joining the battle. The earl would have had to either go through his allies or execute a wide flanking move—near impossible to perform given the standard of drill at the time—to engage Oxford's men.^[106]

At this juncture Henry rode off towards the Stanleys. Seeing this, Richard decided to end the fight quickly by killing the enemy commander. He led a charge of mounted men around the melee and tore into Henry's group; several accounts state that Richard's force numbered 800–1000 knights, but Ross says it was more likely that Richard was accompanied only by his household men and closest friends.^[107] Richard killed Henry's standard-bearer Sir William Brandon in the initial charge and unhorsed burly John Cheyne, Edward IV's former standard-bearer,^[108] with a blow to the head from his broken lance.^[109] Henry's bodyguards surrounded their master and succeeded in keeping him away from the Yorkist king. On seeing Richard embroiled with Henry's men and separated from his main force, William Stanley made his move. He led his men into the fight at Henry's side. Outnumbered, Richard's group was surrounded and gradually pressed back against the marsh.^[109] Richard's banner man—Sir Percival Thirwell—lost his legs but held the Yorkist banner aloft until he was hacked to death.^[110] The king's horse got mired in the soft ground and he was forced to continue the fight on foot.^[111] His followers offered him their horses to escape but Richard refused.^[112] All chroniclers agree that Richard fought bravely to the end;^[109][113] overwhelmed by the masses of Welsh spearmen around him, the last Yorkist king died on the battlefield.^[74][110] Richard's forces disintegrated as news of his death spread. Northumberland and his men fled north on seeing the king's fate, and Norfolk was killed.^[109]

Post-battle[link]

Finding Richard's circlet after the battle, Lord Stanley hands it to Henry.

After the battle, Richard's circlet was found and brought to Henry, who was crowned king at the top of Crown Hill, near the village of Stoke Golding. According to Vergil, Henry's official historian, Lord Stanley found the circlet. Historian Stanley Chrimes and Professor Sydney Anglo dismiss the legend of the crown's finding in a hawthorn bush; none of the contemporary sources reported such an event.^[109] Ross, however, does not ignore the legend. He opines that the hawthorn bush would not be part of Henry's coat of arms if it did not have a strong relationship to his ascendance.^[114] In Vergil's chronicle, 100 of Henry's men, compared to 1,000 of Richard's, died in this battle—a ratio Chrimes believes to be an exaggeration.^[109] The bodies of the fallen were brought to St James Church at Dadlington for burial.^[115] However, Henry denied any immediate rest for Richard; instead the last Yorkist king's corpse was stripped naked and strapped across a horse. His body was brought to Leicester and openly exhibited in a church to show his death. After two days, the corpse was interred in a plain unmarked tomb.^[116]

Henry dismissed the mercenaries in his force, retaining only a small core of local soldiers to form the "Yeomen of his Garde",^[117] and proceeded to establish his rule of England. Parliament reversed his attainder and recorded Richard's kingship as illegal, although the Yorkist king's reign remained officially in the annals of England history. The proclamation of Edward IV's children as illegitimate was also reversed, restoring Elizabeth's status to a royal princess.^[118] The marriage of Elizabeth, the heiress to the House of York, to Henry, the master of the House of Lancaster, marked the end of the feud between the two houses and the start of the Tudor dynasty. The royal matrimony, however, was delayed until Henry was crowned king and had established his claim on the throne firmly enough to preclude that of Elizabeth and her kin.^[119] Henry further convinced Parliament to backdate his reign to the day before the battle,^[110] effectively enabling those who fought against him at Bosworth Field to be declared traitors.^[120] Northumberland, who had remained inactive during the battle, was imprisoned but later released and reinstated to pacify the north in Henry's name.^[121] The purge of those who fought for Richard occupied Henry's first two years of rule, although later he proved prepared to accept those who submitted to him regardless of their former allegiances.^[122]

Of his supporters, Henry rewarded the Stanleys the most generously.^[60] Aside from making William his chamberlain, he bestowed the earldom of Derby upon Lord Stanley along with grants and offices in other estates.^[123] Henry rewarded Oxford by restoring to him the lands and titles confiscated by the Yorkists and appointing him as Constable of the Tower and admiral of England, Ireland, and Aquitaine. For his kin, Henry created Jasper Tudor the Duke of Bedford.^[124] He returned to his mother the lands and grants stripped from her by Richard, and proved to be a filial son, installing her as Queen Mother in the palace and faithfully attending to her throughout his reign. Parliament's declaration of Margaret as femme sole effectively empowered her; she no longer needed to manage her estates through Stanley.^[125] Elton points out that despite his initial largesse, Henry's supporters at Bosworth would only enjoy his special favour for the short term; in later years, he would instead promote those who best served his interests.^[126]

Like the kings before him, Henry faced dissenters. The first open revolt occurred two years after Bosworth Field; Lambert Simnel claimed to be Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, who was Edward IV's nephew. The Earl of Lincoln backed him for the throne and led rebel forces in the name of the House of York.^[121] The rebel army fended off several attacks by Northumberland's forces, before engaging Henry's army at the Battle of Stoke Field on 16 June 1487.^[123] Oxford and Bedford led Henry's men,^[127] including several former supporters of Richard III.^[128] Henry won this battle easily, but other malcontents and conspiracies would follow.^[129] A rebellion in 1489 started with Northumberland's murder; military historian Michael C. C. Adams says that the author of a note, which was left next to Northumberland's body, blamed the earl for Richard's death.^[110]

Legacy[link]

Contemporary accounts of the Battle of Bosworth Field can be found in four main sources, one of which is the English Croyland Chronicle, written by a senior Yorkist chronicler who relied on second-hand information from nobles and soldiers.^[130] The other accounts were written by foreigners—Vergil, Jean Molinet, and Diego de Valera.^[131] Whereas Molinet was sympathetic to Richard,^[132] Vergil was in Henry's service and drew information from the king and his subjects to portray them in a good light.^[133] Diego de Valera, whose information Ross regards as unreliable,^[99] compiled his work from letters of Spanish merchants.^[132] However, other historians have used Valera's work to deduce possibly valuable insights not readily evident in other sources.^[134] Ross finds the poem, The Ballad of Bosworth Field, a useful source to ascertain certain details of the battle. The multitude of different accounts, mostly based on second- or third-hand information, has proved an obstacle to historians as they try to reconstruct the battle.^[99] Their common complaint is that, except for its outcome, very few details of the battle are found in the chronicles. According to historian Michael Hicks, the Battle of Bosworth Field is one of the worst-recorded clashes of the Wars of the Roses.^[98]

Newport History Society re-enacts Henry's march through Wales to Bosworth Field during the battle's quincentenary.

Henry tried to present his victory as a new beginning for the country;^[135] he hired chroniclers to portray his reign as a "modern age" with its dawn in 1485.^[136] Hicks states that the works of Vergil and the blind historian Bernard André, promoted by subsequent Tudor administrations, became the authoritative sources for writers for the next four hundred years.^[137] As such, Tudor literature paints a flattering picture of Henry's reign, depicting the Battle of Bosworth Field as the final clash of the civil war and downplaying the subsequent uprisings.^[98] For England the Middle Ages ended in 1485, and English Heritage claims that other than William the Conqueror's successful invasion of 1066, no other year holds more significance in English history. By portraying Richard as a hunchbacked tyrant who usurped the throne by killing his nephews, the Tudor historians attached a sense of myth to the battle: it became an epic clash between good and evil with a satisfying moral outcome.^[138] According to Reader Colin Burrow, André was so overwhelmed by the historic significance of the battle that he represented it with a blank page in his Henry VII (1502).^[139] For Professor Peter Saccio, the battle was indeed a unique clash in the annals of English history, because "the victory was determined, not by those who fought, but by those who delayed fighting until they were sure of being on the winning side."^[58]

Historians such as Adams and Horrox believe that Richard lost the battle not for any mythic reasons, but because of morale and loyalty problems in his army. Most of the common soldiers found it difficult to fight for a liege whom they distrusted, and some lords believed that their situation might improve if Richard was dethroned.^[104][128] According to Adams, against such duplicities Richard's desperate charge was the only knightly behaviour on the field. As fellow historian Michael Bennet puts it, the attack was "the swan-song of [mediaeval] English chivalry".^[110] Adams believes this view was shared at the time by the printer William Caxton, who enjoyed sponsorship from Edward IV and Richard III. Nine days after the battle, Caxton published Thomas Malory's story about chivalry and death by betrayal—Le Morte d'Arthur—seemingly as a response to the circumstances of Richard's death.^[110]

Elton does not believe Bosworth Field has any true significance, pointing out that the 20th century English public largely ignored the battle until its quincentennial celebration. In his view, the dearth of specific information about the battle—no-one even knows exactly where it took place—demonstrates its insignificance to English society. Elton considers the battle as just one part of Henry's struggles to establish his reign, underscoring his point by noting that the young king had to spend ten more years pacifying factions and rebellions to secure his throne.^[140] Mackie agrees that contemporary historians, wary of the three royal successions during the long Wars of the Roses, considered Bosworth Field just another in a lengthy series of such battles. It was through the works and efforts of Francis Bacon and his successors that the public started to believe the battle had decided their futures by bringing about "the fall of a tyrant".^[141] Mackie concludes that, in hindsight, Bosworth Field is notable as the decisive battle that established a dynasty which would rule unchallenged over England for more than a hundred years.^[142]

Shakespearian dramatisation[link]

William Shakespeare gives prominence to the Battle of Bosworth Field in his play, Richard III. It is the "one big battle"; no other fighting scene distracts the audience from this action,^[143] represented by a one-on-one swordfight between Henry Tudor and Richard III.^[144] Shakespeare uses their duel to bring a climactic end to the play and the Wars of the Roses; he also uses it to champion morality, portraying the "unequivocal triumph of good over evil".^[145] Richard, the villainous lead character, has been built up in the battles of Shakespeare's earlier play, Henry VI, Part 3, as a "formidable swordsman and a courageous military leader"—in contrast to the dastardly means by which he becomes king in Richard III.^[146] Although the Battle of Bosworth Field has only five sentences to direct it, three scenes and more than four hundred lines precede the action, developing the background and motivations for the characters in anticipation of the battle.^[145]

Richard III, Act 5, scene 3: Richard, played by David Garrick, awakens after a nightmare visit by the ghosts of his victims.

Shakespeare's account of the battle was mostly based on chroniclers Edward Hall's and Raphael Holinshed's dramatic versions of history, which were sourced from Vergil's chronicle. However, Shakespeare's attitude towards Richard was shaped by scholar Thomas More, whose writings displayed extreme bias against the Yorkist king.^[147] The result of these influences is a script that vilifies the king, and Shakespeare had few qualms about departing from history to incite drama.^[148] Margaret of Anjou died in 1482, but Shakespeare had her speak to Richard's mother before the battle to foreshadow Richard's fate and fulfil the prophecy she had given in Henry VI.^[149] Shakespeare exaggerated the cause of Richard's restless night before the battle, imagining it as a haunting by the ghosts of those whom the king had murdered, including Buckingham.^[150] Richard is portrayed as suffering a pang of conscience, but as he speaks he regains his confidence and asserts that he will be evil, if such needed to retain his crown.^[151]

The fight between the two armies is simulated by rowdy noises made off-stage (alarums or alarms) while actors walk on-stage, deliver their lines, and exit. To build anticipation for the duel, Shakespeare requests more alarums after Richard's councillor, William Catesby, announces that the king is "[enacting] more wonders than a man". Richard punctuates his entrance with the classic line, "A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!"^[144] He refuses to withdraw, continuing to seek to slay Henry's doubles until he has killed his nemesis. There is no documentary evidence that Henry had five decoys at Bosworth Field; the idea was Shakespeare's invention. He drew inspiration from Henry IV's use of them at the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403) to amplify the perception of Richard's courage on the battlefield.^[152] Similarly, the single combat between Henry and Richard is Shakespeare's creation. The True Tragedy of Richard III, a play earlier than Shakespeare's, has no signs of staging such an encounter: its stage directions give not a hint of visible combat.^[153]

The Battle of Bosworth Field, a Scene in the Great Drama of History, illustrating Beckett's mocking of Victorian attitude towards history

Despite the dramatic licences taken, Shakespeare's version of the Battle of Bosworth Field was the model of the event for English textbooks for many years during the 18th and 19th centuries.^[154] This glamorised version of history, promulgated in books and paintings and played out on stages across the country, perturbed humorist Gilbert Abbott à Beckett.^[155] He voiced his criticism in the form of a poem, equating the romantic view of the battle to watching a "fifth-rate production of Richard III": shabbily costumed actors fight the Battle of Bosworth Field on-stage while those with lesser roles lounge at the back, showing no interest in the proceedings.^[156]

In Laurence Olivier's 1955 film adaptation of Richard III, the Battle of Bosworth Field is represented not by a single duel but a general melee that became the film's most recognised scene and a regular screening at Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre.^[157] The film depicts the clash between the Yorkist and Lancastrian armies on an open field, focusing on individual characters amidst the savagery of hand-to-hand fighting, and received accolades for the realism portrayed.^[158] One reviewer for The Manchester Guardian newspaper, however, was not impressed, finding the number of combatants too sparse for the wide plains and a lack of subtlety in Richard's death scene.^[159] The means by which Richard is shown to prepare his army for the battle also earned acclaim. As Richard speaks to his men and draws his plans in the sand using his sword, his units appear on-screen, arraying themselves according to the lines that Richard had drawn. Intimately woven together, the combination of pictorial and narrative elements effectively turns Richard into a storyteller, who acts out the plot he has constructed.^[160] Shakespearian critic Herbert Coursen extends that imagery: Richard sets himself up as a creator of men, but dies amongst the savagery of his creations. Coursen finds the depiction a contrast to that of Henry V and his "band of brothers".^[161]

The adaptation of the setting for Richard III to a 1930s fascist England in Ian McKellen's 1995 film, however, did not sit well with historians. Adams posits that the original Shakespearian setting for Richard's fate at Bosworth teaches the moral of facing one's fate, no matter how unjust it is, "nobly and with dignity".^[162] By overshadowing the dramatic teaching with special effects, McKellen's film reduces its version of the battle to a pyrotechnic spectacle about the death of a one-dimensional villain.^[163] Coursen agrees that, in this version, the battle and Richard's end are trite and underwhelming.^[164]

Battlefield[link]

Richard's Field

The memorial and its plaque

Officially the site of the battle is deemed by Leicestershire County Council to be in the vicinity of the town of Market Bosworth.^[165] The council engaged historian Daniel Williams to research the battle, and in 1974 his findings were used to build the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and the presentation it houses.^[166] Williams's interpretation, however, has since been questioned. Sparked by the battle's quincentenary celebration in 1985,^[165] a dispute among historians has led many to suspect the accuracy of Williams's theory.^[167][168] In particular, geological surveys conducted from 2003 to 2009 by the Battlefields Trust, a charitable organisation that protects and studies old English battlefields, show that the southern and eastern flanks of Ambion Hill were solid ground in the 15th century, contrary to Williams's claim that it was a large area of marshland.^[169] Landscape archaeologist Glenn Foard, leader of the survey,^[170] said the collected soil samples and finds of mediaeval military equipment suggest that the battle took place two miles (3 km) southwest of Ambion Hill (52°34′41″N 1°26′02″W),^[171] contrary to the popular belief that it was fought near the foot of the hill.^[172]

English Heritage argues that the battle was named after Market Bosworth because the town was the nearest significant settlement to the battlefield in the 15th century.^[133] As explored by Professor Philip Morgan, a battle might initially be treated by society as an unremarkable event, deeming it of no memorable quality and therefore not requiring a name. As time passes, writers of administrative and historical records find it necessary to identify the battle, ascribing it a name that is usually toponymical in nature and sourced from combatants or observers. This official name becomes accepted by society and future generations without question.^[173] Early records associated the Battle of Bosworth Field with "Brownehethe", "bellum Miravallenses", "Sandeford" and "Dadlyngton field".^[174] The earliest record, a municipal memorandum of 23 August 1485 from York,^[175] locates the battle "on the field of Redemore".^[176] This is corroborated by a 1485–86 letter that mentions "Redesmore" as its site.^[166] According to historian Peter Foss, records did not associate the battle with "Bosworth" until 1510.^[174]

Foss is named by English Heritage as the principal advocate for "Redemore" as the battlesite. He suggests the name is derived from "Hreod Mor", an Anglo-Saxon phrase that means "reedy marshland". Basing his opinion on 13th- and 16th-century church records, he believes "Redemore" was an area of wetland that lay between Ambion Hill and the village of Dadlington, and was close to the Fenn Lanes, a Roman road running east to west across the region.^[166] Foard believes this road to be the most probable route that both armies took to reach the battlefield.^[177] Williams dismisses the notion of "Redmore" as a specific location, calling the word a general term used to describe a large area of reddish soil; Foss argues that Williams's sources are local stories and flawed interpretations of records.^[178] Moreover, he proposes that Williams was influenced by William Hutton's 1788 The Battle of Bosworth-Field, which Foss blames for introducing the notion that the battle was fought west of Ambion Hill on the north side of the River Sence.^[166] Hutton, as Foss suggests, misinterpreted a passage from his source, Raphael Holinshed's 1577 Chronicle. Holinshed wrote, "King Richard pitched his field on a hill called Anne Beame, refreshed his soldiers and took his rest." Foss believes that Hutton mistook "field" to mean "field of battle", thus creating the idea that the fight took place on Anne Beame (Ambion) Hill. To "[pitch] his field", as Foss clarifies, was a period expression for setting up a camp.^[178]

St James the Greater, Dadlington: the dead of Bosworth Field were buried here.

Foss brings further evidence for his "Redemore" theory by quoting Edward Hall's 1550 Chronicle. Hall stated that Richard's army stepped onto a plain after breaking camp the next day. Furthermore, historian William Burton, author of Description of Leicestershire (1622),^[166] wrote that the battle was "fought in a large, flat, plaine, and spacious ground, three miles [5 km] distant from [Bosworth], between the Towne of Shenton, Sutton [Cheney], Dadlington and Stoke [Golding]".^[178] In Foss's opinion both sources are describing an area of flat ground north of Dadlington.^[133]

English Heritage, responsible for managing England's historic sites, used both theories to designate the site for Bosworth Field. Without preference for either theory, they constructed a single continuous battlefield boundary that encompasses the locations proposed by both Williams and Foss.^[179] The region has experienced extensive changes over the years, starting after the battle. Holinshed stated in his chronicle that he found firm ground where he expected the marsh to be, and Burton confirmed that by the end of the 16th century, areas of the battlefield were enclosed and had been improved to make them agriculturally productive. Trees were planted on the south side of Ambion Hill, forming Ambion Wood. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ashby Canal carved through the land west and south-west of Ambion Hill. Winding alongside the canal at a distance, the Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway crossed the area on an embankment.^[133][180] The changes to the landscape were so extensive that when Hutton revisited the region in 1807 after an earlier 1788 visit, he could not readily find his way around.^[133]

Richard's Well, where the last Yorkist king supposedly took a drink of water on the day of the battle.

Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre was built on Ambion Hill, near Richard's Well. According to legend, Richard III drank from one of the several springs in the region on the day of the battle.^[181] In 1788, a local pointed out one of the springs to Hutton as the one mentioned in the legend.^[115] A stone structure was later built over the location. The inscription on the well reads:

"Near this spot, on August 22nd 1485, at the age of 32, King Richard III fell fighting gallantly in defence of his realm & his crown against the usurper Henry Tudor.

The Cairn was erected by Dr. Samuel Parr in 1813 to mark the well from which the king is said to have drunk during the battle.

It is maintained by the Fellowship of the White Boar."^[182]

Northwest of Ambion Hill, just across the northern tributary of the Sence, a flag and memorial stone mark Richard's Field. Erected in 1973, the site was selected on the basis of Williams's theory.^[183] St James's Church at Dadlington is the only structure in the area that is reliably associated with the Battle of Bosworth Field; the bodies of those killed in the battle were buried there.^[115]

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

Books

Periodicals

Online sources

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Battle of Bosworth Field

• Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and Country Park: website for the museum, contains information and photos about current state of the battlefield
• Richard III Society: history society, which contains photos and articles that present several competing theories about the location of the battle

v t e Wars of the Roses Red Rose of Lancaster White Rose of York Tudor Rose Key figures Monarchs of England Henry VI Edward IV Edward V Richard III Henry VII Lancastrian Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England Henry Percy, 2nd Earl of Northumberland Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset Edmund Beaufort, 4th Duke of Somerset George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence Yorkist Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu William Neville, 1st Earl of Kent Thomas Neville, Viscount Fauconberg Battles Lancastrian victories Battle of Ludford Bridge Battle of Wakefield Second Battle of St Albans Battle of Ferrybridge (Indecisive) Battle of Edgecote Moor Battle of Bosworth Field Battle of Stoke Field Yorkist victories First Battle of St Albans Battle of Blore Heath Battle of Sandwich Battle of Northampton Battle of Mortimer's Cross Battle of Ferrybridge (Indecisive) Battle of Towton Battle of Hedgeley Moor Battle of Hexham Battle of Lose-coat Field Battle of Barnet Battle of Tewkesbury See also Act of Accord Percy–Neville feud Issue of Edward III of England Book:Wars of the Roses Category:Wars of the Roses Portal:England / Monarchy

Coordinates: 52°35′28″N 1°24′37″W / 52.59111°N 1.41028°W / 52.59111; -1.41028

The Right Honourable The Lord Olivier OM
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1939
Born	(1907-05-22)22 May 1907 Dorking, Surrey, United Kingdom
Died	11 July 1989(1989-07-11) (aged 82) Steyning, West Sussex, United Kingdom
Occupation	Actor, director, producer, screenwriter
Years active	1926–88
Spouse	Jill Esmond (1930–40; divorced) Vivien Leigh (1940–60; divorced) Joan Plowright (1961–89; his death)
Children	2 sons, 2 daughters
Relatives	Sydney Olivier (uncle, deceased) Noel Olivier (cousin, deceased)
Website
http://www.laurenceolivier.com/

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM ( /ˈlɒrəns ɵˈlɪvi.eɪ/; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer. One of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century,^[1] he was the youngest actor to be knighted and the first to be elevated to the peerage.^[2] He married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Actor Spencer Tracy said that Olivier was 'the greatest actor in the English-speaking world'.^[3]

Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is regarded by some to be the greatest actor of the 20th century,^[4] in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries. Olivier's AMPAS acknowledgments are considerable: twelve Oscar nominations, with two awards (for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet), plus two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.

Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. A High church clergyman's son who found fame on the West End stage, Olivier became determined early on to master Shakespeare, and eventually came to be regarded as one of the foremost Shakespeare interpreters of the 20th century. He continued to act until the year before his death in 1989.^[5] Olivier played more than 120 stage roles: Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War, and A Bridge Too Far, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Sleuth, John Schlesinger's Marathon Man, Daniel Petrie's The Betsy, Desmond Davis' Clash of the Titans, and his own Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III. He also preserved his Othello on film, with its stage cast virtually intact. For television, he starred in The Moon and Sixpence, John Gabriel Borkman, Long Day's Journey into Night, Brideshead Revisited, The Merchant of Venice, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and King Lear, among others.

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Olivier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, at number 14 on the list.

Early life[link]

Olivier was born on 22 May 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, England. He was raised in a severe, strict, and religious household, ruled over by his father, Gerard Kerr Olivier (1869–1939), a High Anglican priest^[6] whose father was Henry Arnold Olivier, a rector. Olivier took solace in the care of his mother, Agnes Louise (née Crookenden; 1871–1920, and herself the younger sister of High Anglican vicar George Pelham Crookenden), and was grief-stricken when she died (at 48) when he was only 12.^[7] Gerard Dacres "Dickie" (1904–1958) and Sybille (1901–1989) were his two older siblings. His uncle was Sydney Olivier, 1st Baron Olivier, a career civil servant and Fabian who ended up as a Governor of Jamaica and as Secretary of State for India in the first government of Ramsay MacDonald. Another uncle was Herbert Arnould Olivier, the artist.

In 1918, his father became the new church minister at St. Mary's Church, Letchworth, Hertfordshire and the family lived at the Old Rectory, now part of St Christopher School. He was educated at the choir school of All Saints', Margaret Street, London.^[8] He played Brutus in his school's production of "Julius Caesar" at the age of 9, where Ellen Terry noted he was "already a great actor".^[9] At 13 he went to St Edward's School, Oxford again appearing in school drama productions: he was a "bold" Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew (selected for a schools' drama festival at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford)^[9] and Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, played "very well, to everyone's disgust", as Olivier noted in his diary.^[10] After his brother, Dickie, left for India, it was his father who decided that Laurence—or "Kim", as the family called him—would become an actor.^[11]

Early career[link]

Olivier, 17 years old, attended the Central School of Speech and Drama, tutored by Elsie Fogerty.^[12] In 1926, he joined The Birmingham Repertory Company.^{[13][dead link]} At first he was given only minor tasks at the theatre, such as bell-ringing; however, his roles eventually became more significant, and in 1927 he was playing Hamlet and Macbeth.^[5] In 1928, he was cast to play Captain Stanhope in the Apollo theatre's first production of Journey's End, a play which would expand his career. He always insisted that his acting was pure technique, and he was contemptuous of contemporaries who adopted method acting popularised by Lee Strasberg.

Olivier with his future second wife, Vivien Leigh, in Fire Over England (1937)

Olivier married Jill Esmond, a rising young actress, on 25 July 1930; their only son, Simon Tarquin was born on 21 August 1936. Olivier was, however, from the beginning not happy in his first marriage. Repressed, as he came to see it, by his religious upbringing, Olivier recounted in his autobiography the disappointments of his wedding night, culminating in his failure to perform sexually. He temporarily renounced religion and soon came to resent his wife, though the marriage would last for ten years.^{[citation needed]} Despite this supposed resentment, Olivier remained in congenial contact with Esmond until his death (as documented by their son Tarquin in his book My Father Laurence Olivier), accompanying her to Tarquin’s wedding in January 1965.

He made his film debut in The Temporary Widow and played his first leading role on film in The Yellow Ticket; however, he held the film in little regard.^[12] His stage breakthrough was in Noël Coward's Private Lives in 1930, followed by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in 1935, alternating the roles of Romeo and Mercutio with John Gielgud. Olivier did not agree with Gielgud's style of acting Shakespeare and was irritated by the fact that Gielgud was getting better reviews than he was.^[14][15] His tension towards Gielgud came to a head in 1940, when Olivier approached London impresario Binkie Beaumont about financing him in a repertory of the four great Shakespearean tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear. However, Beaumont would only agree to the plan if Olivier and Gielgud alternated in the roles of Hamlet/Laertes, Othello/Iago, Macbeth/Macduff, and Lear/Gloucester and that Gielgud direct at least one of the productions, a proposition Olivier bluntly declined.^[16]

In 1939, Olivier starred in a production of No Time for Comedy, by S.N. Behrman in a Katharine Cornell production with them both in leading roles. It was his first prominent role on Broadway.^[17]

Olivier and Vivien Leigh in Old Vic production of Hamlet, 1938

The engagement as Romeo resulted in an invitation by Lilian Baylis to be the star at the Old Vic in 1937/38. Olivier's tenure had mixed artistic results, with his performances as Hamlet and Iago drawing a negative response from critics and his first attempt at Macbeth receiving mixed reviews.^{[citation needed]} But his appearances as Henry V, Coriolanus, and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night were triumphs, and his popularity with Old Vic audiences left Olivier as one of the major Shakespearean actors in England by the season's end.^{[citation needed]}

Olivier continued to hold his scorn for film, and though he constantly worked for Alexander Korda, he still felt most at home on the stage. He made his first Shakespeare film, As You Like It, with Paul Czinner, however, Olivier disliked it, thinking that Shakespeare did not work well on film.^{[citation needed]}

Laurence Olivier saw Vivien Leigh in The Mask of Virtue in 1936, and a friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. While playing lovers in the film Fire Over England (1937), Olivier and Leigh developed a strong attraction, and after filming was completed, they began an affair.^[18] Leigh played Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet in an Old Vic Theatre production, and Olivier later recalled an incident during which her mood rapidly changed as she was quietly preparing to go on-stage. Without apparent provocation, she began screaming at him, before suddenly becoming silent and staring into space. She was able to perform without mishap, and by the following day, she had returned to normal with no recollection of the event. It was the first time Olivier witnessed such behaviour from her.^[19]

The move to Hollywood[link]

Olivier travelled to Hollywood to begin filming Wuthering Heights as Heathcliff. Leigh followed soon after, partly to be with him, but also to pursue her dream of playing Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Olivier found the filming of Wuthering Heights to be difficult but it proved to be a turning point for him, both in his success in the United States, which had eluded him until then, but also in his attitude to film, which he had regarded as an inferior medium to theatre.^{[citation needed]} The film's producer, Samuel Goldwyn was highly dissatisfied with Olivier's overstated performance after several weeks of filming and threatened to dismiss him.^{[citation needed]} Olivier had grown to regard the film's female lead, Merle Oberon, as an amateur; however, when he stated his opinion to Goldwyn, he was reminded that Oberon was the star of the film and already a well-known name in American cinema.^{[citation needed]} Olivier was told that he was dispensable and that he was required to be more tolerant of Oberon.^{[citation needed]} Olivier recalled that he took Goldwyn's words to heart, but after some consideration realised that he was correct; he began to moderate his performance to fit the more intimate film medium and began to appreciate the possibilities it offered.^{[citation needed]}

The film was a hit and Olivier was praised for his performance, with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Leigh won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Gone with the Wind, and the couple suddenly found themselves to be major celebrities throughout the world.^{[citation needed]} They wanted to marry, but at first both Leigh's husband and Olivier's wife at the time, Jill Esmond, refused to divorce them. Finally divorced, they were married in simple ceremony on 31 August 1940 with only Katharine Hepburn and Garson Kanin as witnesses.^[20] Olivier's American film career flourished with highly regarded performances in Rebecca and Pride and Prejudice (both 1940).

in Pride and Prejudice (1940)

Olivier and Leigh starred in a theatre production of Romeo and Juliet in New York City. It was an extravagant production, but a commercial failure.^[21] Brooks Atkinson for The New York Times wrote, "Although Miss Leigh and Mr Olivier are handsome young people they hardly act their parts at all."^[22] The couple had invested almost their entire savings into the project, and its failure was a financial disaster for them.^[23]

They filmed That Hamilton Woman (1941) with Olivier as Horatio Nelson and Leigh as Emma Hamilton. With Britain engaged in World War II, the Oliviers returned to England, and in 1944 tuberculosis was diagnosed in Leigh's left lung, but after spending several weeks in hospital, she appeared to be cured.^{[citation needed]} In the spring, she was filming Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) when she discovered she was pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage. She fell into a deep depression which reached its nadir when she turned on Olivier, verbally and physically attacking him until she fell to the floor sobbing. This was the first of many major breakdowns related to manic-depression, or bipolar mood disorder.^{[citation needed]} Olivier came to recognise the symptoms of an impending episode—several days of hyperactivity followed by a period of depression and an explosive breakdown, after which Leigh would have no memory of the event, but would be acutely embarrassed and remorseful.^[24]

War[link]

When World War II broke out, Olivier intended to join the Royal Air Force, but was still contractually obliged to other parties. He apparently disliked actors such as Charles Laughton and Cedric Hardwicke, who would hold charity cricket matches to help the war effort.^[5] Olivier took flying lessons, and racked up over 200 hours. After two years of service, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Olivier RNVR, as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm^[25] but was never called to see action. Director Michael Powell wanted Olivier to play the lead in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) but Winston Churchill objected to the movie and the Fleet Air Arm refused to release Olivier.^[26]

In 1944 he and fellow actor Ralph Richardson were released from their naval commitments to form a new Old Vic Theatre Company at the New Theatre (later the Albery, now the Noël Coward Theatre) with a nightly repertory of three plays, initially Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man and Shakespeare's Richard III, rehearsed over 10 weeks to the accompaniment of German V1 'doodlebugs'. The enterprise, with John Burrell as manager, eventually extended to five acclaimed seasons ending in 1949, after a prestigious 1948 tour of Australia and New Zealand.^{[citation needed]}

The second New Theatre season opened with Olivier playing both Harry Hotspur and Justice Shallow to Richardson's Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, in what is now seen as a high point of English classical theatre. The magic continued with one of Olivier's most famous endeavours, the double bill of Sophocles' Oedipus and Sheridan's The Critic, with Olivier's transition from Greek tragedy to high comedy in a single evening becoming a thing of legend. He followed this triumph with one of his favourite roles, Astrov in Uncle Vanya.

Kenneth Tynan was to write (in He Who Plays the King, 1950): "The Old Vic was now at its height: the watershed had been reached and one of those rare moments in the theatre had arrived when drama paused, took stock of all that it had learnt since Irving, and then produced a monument in celebration. It is surprising when one considers it, that English acting should have reached up and seized a laurel crown in the middle of a war."

In 1944, Olivier filmed Henry V, which—in view of the patriotic nature of the story of the English victory—was viewed as a psychological contribution to the British war effort.

In 1945 Olivier and Richardson were made honorary Lieutenants with ENSA, and did a six-week tour of Europe for the army, performing Arms and the Man, Peer Gynt and Richard III for the troops, followed by a visit to the Comédie-Française in Paris, the first time a foreign company had been invited to play on its famous stage.^[27] When Olivier returned to London the populace noticed a change in him. Olivier's only explanation was: "Maybe it's just that I've got older."^[12]

A 2007 biography of Olivier, Lord Larry: The Secret Life of Laurence Olivier by Michael Munn, claims that Olivier was recruited to be an undercover agent inside the United States for the British government by film producer and MI5 operative Alexander Korda on the instructions of Winston Churchill. Munn's main source was Hollywood producer Jesse Lasky, who believed that "Larry...was drumming up support, and doing it with the British Government's sanction".^[28]

According to an article in The Telegraph, David Niven, a good friend of Olivier's, is said to have told Michael Munn, "What was dangerous for his country was that (Olivier) could have been accused of being an agent. So this was a danger for Larry because he could have been arrested. And what was worse, if German agents had realised what Larry was doing, they would, I am sure, have gone after him."^[29]

Post-war years[link]

Olivier and Leigh arriving in Brisbane, Australia, June 1948

In 1947 Olivier was made a Knight Bachelor and by 1948 he was on the Board of Directors for the Old Vic Theatre, and he and Leigh embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand to raise funds for the theatre. During their six-month tour, Olivier performed Richard III and also performed with Leigh in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal and Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. The tour was an outstanding success, and although Leigh was plagued with insomnia and allowed her understudy to replace her for a week while she was ill, she generally withstood the demands placed upon her, with Olivier noting her ability to "charm the press". Members of the company later recalled several quarrels between the couple, with the most dramatic of these occurring in Christchurch when Leigh refused to go on stage. Olivier slapped her face, and Leigh slapped him in return and swore at him before she made her way to the stage.

By the end of the tour, both were exhausted and ill, and Olivier told a journalist, "You may not know it, but you are talking to a couple of walking corpses." Later he would comment that he "lost Vivien" in Australia.^[30] This may be a reference to Leigh's affair with Australian actor Peter Finch, whom Olivier met during the tour and invited to come to England. Once Finch made the move, Olivier became his mentor and put him under a long-term contract. Finch began an affair with Leigh in 1948, which continued on and off for several years, ultimately falling apart due to her deteriorating mental condition.^[31]

The success of the Australian tour encouraged the Oliviers to make their first West End appearance together, performing the same works with one addition, Antigone, included at Leigh's insistence because she wished to play a role in a tragedy. Leigh next sought the role of Blanche DuBois in the West End stage production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, and was cast after Williams and the play's producer, Irene Mayer Selznick, saw her in The School for Scandal and Antigone, and Olivier was contracted to direct.^[32]

Leigh would go on to star as Blanche in the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, which was directed by Elia Kazan. Olivier accepted a starring role in Carrie, director William Wyler's adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie in order to accompany her to Hollywood and look after her as her mental health already was fragile. During the filming of Streetcar, Kazan had to wean her away from the interpretation she had developed in London under Olivier's direction.

In 1951, as their contribution to the Festival of Britain celebrations, Leigh and Olivier performed two plays about Cleopatra, William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, alternating the play each night and winning good reviews. They took the productions to New York, where they performed a season at the Ziegfeld Theatre into 1952. The reviews there were also mostly positive, but the critic Kenneth Tynan angered them when he suggested that Leigh's was a mediocre talent which forced Olivier to compromise his own. Tynan's diatribe almost precipitated another collapse; Leigh, terrified of failure and intent on achieving greatness, dwelt on his comments, while ignoring the positive reviews of other critics.^[33] She was performing on Broadway when she got news that she had won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in A Streetcar Named Desire.

In January 1953, Leigh traveled to Ceylon to film Elephant Walk with Peter Finch. Shortly after filming commenced, she suffered a breakdown, and Paramount Pictures replaced her with Elizabeth Taylor. Olivier returned her to their home in England, where between periods of incoherence, Leigh told him that she was in love with Finch, and had been having an affair with him. She gradually recovered over a period of several months. As a result of this episode, many of the Oliviers' friends learned of her problems. David Niven said she had been "quite, quite mad", and in his diary, Noël Coward expressed surprise that "things had been bad and getting worse since 1948 or thereabouts."^[34]

Leigh recovered sufficiently to play The Sleeping Prince with Olivier in 1953, and in 1955 they performed a season at Stratford-upon-Avon in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus. They played to capacity houses and attracted generally good reviews, Leigh's health seemingly stable. Noël Coward was enjoying success with the play South Sea Bubble, with Leigh in the lead role, but she became pregnant and withdrew from the production. Several weeks later, she miscarried and entered a period of depression that lasted for months. She joined Olivier for a European tour with Titus Andronicus, but the tour was marred by Leigh's frequent outbursts against Olivier and other members of the company. After their return to London, her former husband Leigh Holman, who continued to exert a strong influence over her, stayed with the Oliviers and helped calm her.^{[citation needed]}

During the 1950s, Olivier had affairs with other actresses, including Claire Bloom, who was his co-star in Richard III^[35].

In 1958, considering her marriage to be over, Leigh began a relationship with the actor Jack Merivale, who knew of Leigh's medical condition and assured Olivier he would care for her. She achieved a success in 1959 with the Noël Coward comedy Look After Lulu, with The Times critic describing her as "beautiful, delectably cool and matter of fact, she is mistress of every situation."^[36]

In December 1960 she and Olivier divorced enabling Olivier to marry the actress Joan Plowright, his co-star in John Osborne's The Entertainer on both stage and screen. Olivier and Plowright would have three children: Richard Kerr (b. 1961), Tamsin Agnes Margaret (b. 1963), and Julie-Kate (b. 1966).

In his autobiography he discussed the years of problems they had experienced because of Leigh's illness, writing, "Throughout her possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual canniness—an ability to disguise her true mental condition from almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the trouble."^[37]

Shakespeare trilogy[link]

After gaining widespread popularity in the film medium, Olivier was approached by several investors (namely Filippo Del Giudice, Alexander Korda and J. Arthur Rank), to create several Shakespearean films, based on stage productions of each respective play. Olivier tried his hand at directing, and as a result, created three critically successful films: Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III. Because of the failure of Richard III to turn a profit, he was unable to secure financing for a fourth film, an adaptation of Macbeth, with which he had had a great success on stage at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1955.

[edit] Henry V

During the Second World War, Olivier made his directorial debut with a film of Shakespeare's Henry V. At first, he did not believe he was up to the task, instead trying to offer it to William Wyler, Carol Reed, and Terence Young. The film was shot in Ireland (because it was a neutral country), with the Irish plains serving for the fields of Agincourt and the Irish army providing extras for the battle scenes. During the shooting of one of the battle scenes, a horse collided with a camera that Olivier was operating. Olivier had had his eye to the viewfinder; and, when the horse crashed into his position, the camera smashed into him, cutting his lip and leaving a scar that would be visible in later roles.^{[citation needed]}

The film opened to rave reviews;^{[citation needed]} it was the first widely successful Shakespeare film, and was considered a work of art.^{[citation needed]} The film received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Actor, but the Academy, in Olivier's opinion, did not feel comfortable in giving out all of their major awards to a foreigner, so they gave him a special Honorary Award. Olivier disregarded the award as a "fob-off".^[38]

[edit] Hamlet

Olivier followed up on his success with an adaptation of Hamlet. He had played this role more often than he had Henry, and was more familiar with the melancholy Dane. However, Olivier was not particularly comfortable with the introverted role of Hamlet, as opposed to the extroverts that he was famous for portraying. The running time of Hamlet (1948) was not allowed to exceed 153 minutes, and as a result Olivier cut almost half of Shakespeare's text, excising Rosencrantz and Guildernstern completely. He was severely criticised for doing so by purists, most notably Ethel Barrymore; Barrymore stated that the adaptation was not nearly as faithful to the original text as her brother John's stage production from 1922.^{[citation needed]} Ironically, Ethel presented the Best Picture Oscar that year—and was visibly shaken when she read,"Hamlet".^{[citation needed]}

The film became another resounding critical and commercial success in Britain and abroad,^[5] winning Olivier Best Picture and Best Actor at the 1948 Academy Awards. It was the first British film to win Best Picture, and Olivier's only Best Actor win, a category for which he would be nominated five more times before his death. Olivier also became the first person to direct himself in an Oscar-winning performance, a feat not repeated until Roberto Benigni directed himself to Best Actor of 1998 for Life Is Beautiful. Also, Olivier remains the only actor to receive an Oscar for a Shakespearean role.^{[citation needed]} Olivier, however, did not win the Best Director Oscar that year.

[edit] Richard III

Olivier's third major Shakespeare project as director and star was Richard III. Alexander Korda initially approached Olivier to reprise on film the role he had played to acclaim at the Old Vic in the 1940s. Although the film initially received mixed reception, it's critical reptutation has since increased, and many critics now consider it his most inspirational (and arguable best) screen adaptation of Shakespeare.^{[citation needed]} During the filming of the battle scenes in Spain, one of the archers accidentally shot Olivier in the ankle, causing him to limp. Fortunately the limp was required for the part, so Olivier had already been limping in the parts of the film already shot.^[39]

Olivier would be nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for the fifth time. Korda sold the rights to the American television network NBC, and the film became the first to be aired on television and released in theatres simultaneously.^{[citation needed]} Many deduce that from the enormous ratings that the NBC transmissions received, more people saw Richard III in that single showing than all the people who had seen it on stage in the play's history.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Macbeth (Unrealized project)

After making Richard III, Olivier wanted to make a film of Macbeth, with himself in the title role and Vivien Leigh as his Lady. He was not able to obtain financing. Richard III had failed to make a profit and the death of Alexander Korda, who had agreed to make the film if production was put off until 1957, cut off that avenue.^[40]

Olivier had interested Oscar-winning producer Mike Todd in financing the film, but he too died, in 1958, and Olivier's hopes of making the film were quashed.^[41]

"I tried for nine months when I wanted to make a film out of Macbeth," Olivier said. "I was never a producer in the accepted sense, only in the more artistic sense." ^[42]

Critic Pauline Kael cited Olivier's failure to make a film of what was considered one of his greatest performance to be emblematic of the perversity of Hollywood. Melvyn Bragg, in the notes of his Richard Burton: A Life, says that Burton told Olivier circa 1970 that he as planning on making his own film of Macbeth with Elizabeth Taylor (who had been Mike Todd's wife when he died) as Lady Macbeth, knowing that this would hurt Olivier.

[edit] The Entertainer

After World War II, apart from his Shakespeare trilogy, Olivier had made only sporadic film appearances. In 1957, he directed and acted in The Prince and the Showgirl with Marilyn Monroe.

In the second half of the 1950s, British theatre was changing with the rise of the "Angry Young Men". John Osborne, author of Look Back in Anger, wrote a play for Olivier entitled The Entertainer, centred on a washed-up stage comedian called Archie Rice, which opened at the Royal Court on 10 April 1957. As Olivier later stated, "I am Archie Rice. I am not Hamlet."

During rehearsals of The Entertainer, Olivier met Joan Plowright, who took over the role of Jean Rice from Dorothy Tutin when Tony Richardson's Royal Court production transferred to the Palace Theatre in September 1957.^[43] Later, in 1960, Tony Richardson also directed the screen version with Olivier and Plowright repeating their stage roles. Olivier received his fifth Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for The Entertainer.

Olivier married Plowright on St. Patrick's Day, 1961.^{[citation needed]}

National Theatre[link]

Olivier was one of the founders, and the inaugural director, of the National Theatre. He became first NT Director at the Old Vic before the South Bank building was constructed with his opening production of Hamlet in October 1963.

During his directorship he appeared in twelve plays (taking over roles in three) and directed nine, enjoying particularly remarkable personal successes for his performances in Othello (1964), The Dance of Death (1967) and Long Day's Journey into Night (1971).^[44] Reportedly, some felt that his tenure as the director of the NT was marred by his jealousy towards other performers when he manoeuvred to block famous names like John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson from appearing there,^{[45][verification needed]} although young actors like Michael Gambon, Robert Lang, Maggie Smith, Sheila Reid, Christopher Timothy, Alan Bates, Frank Finlay, Derek Jacobi and Anthony Hopkins (both of whom understudied Olivier) made their names there during the period.

Olivier's tenure as director of the National began to unravel when a proposed production of Rolf Hochhuth's Soldiers was vetoed by the National's board of directors. The production had been championed by Olivier's dramaturg, Kenneth Tynan. Though Olivier, a great admirer of Winston Churchill (whom essentially is accused of assassinating Polish Prime Minister General Władysław Sikorski by Hochhuth) did not particularly like the play or its depiction of Churchill (whom Tynan wanted him to play), he backed his dramaturg. There was a potential problem with the Lord Chamberlain, who might not have licensed the play due to its controversy. The production was vetoed by the National board, which was headed by chairman Lord Chandos, a member of Churchill's wartime cabinet, who damned the play as "grotesque and grievous libel".^[46]

The stymying of the production was a watershed event at the National, leading to the eventual ouster of Tynan and the eventual replacement of Olivier. When the board subsequently vetoed a proposed production of Guys and Dolls (a cherished project of Olivier who longed to play Nathan Detroit) after a postponement due to his poor health, it was apparent he was on shaky ground. He tried to interest Richard Burton and Albert Finney in replacing him. Neither was interested. Burton, commenting in his diaries, balked at the proposition for many reasons, but mentioned the mistreatment of Olivier by the board. If the great Olivier, the first actor to be made a peer -- a man who had given up a fortune in earnings in the West End and in films to nurture the National could be frustrated when it came to putting on controversial and even non-controversial projects by bureaucrats -- what chance did Burton have?

Olivier never was able to choose his successor. His career at the National ended, in his view, in betrayal when the theatre's governorship decided to replace him with Peter Hall in 1973 without consulting him on the choice and not informing him of the decision until several months after it had been made.^[5] Picking Hall, the founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National's great rival, was seen by many as a calculated insult to Olivier.

[edit] Othello

Olivier underwent a transformation, requiring extensive study and heavy weightlifting, to get the physique needed for the Moor of Venice. It is said that he bellowed at a herd of cows for an hour to get the deep voice that was required.^{[citation needed]} John Dexter's 1964 stage production of the play was filmed in 1965, securing Olivier his sixth Oscar nomination for Best Actor. The production was a huge public success as it also was with most of the critics. Franco Zeffirelli said of Olivier's acting: "It's an anthology of everything that has been discovered about acting in the past three centuries." Even so, it has not gone without criticism: in 1997, director Jonathan Miller called it "a condescending view of an Afro Caribbean person".^[47]

[edit] Three Sisters

Olivier's final film as director was the 1970 film Three Sisters, based on the Chekhov play of the same name, and his 1967 National Theatre production. It was, in Olivier's opinion, his best work as director.^[11] The film was co-directed by John Sichel.

In addition, his most fondly remembered National Theatre performances at the Old Vic were as Astrov in his own production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, seen first in 1962 at the Chichester Festival Theatre, of which he was the founding director; his Captain Brazen in William Gaskill's December 1963 staging of George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer; Shylock in Jonathan Miller's 1970 revival of The Merchant of Venice; and his definitive portrayal of James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, produced in December 1971 by Michael Blakemore.^{[citation needed]} These last two were later restaged for television, and telecast both in England and in the United States.

He played a droll supporting role as the ancient Antonio in Franco Zeffirelli's 1973 production of Eduardo De Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, with his wife Joan Plowright in the starring role of Rosa. His final stage appearance, on 21 March 1974, was as the fiery Glaswegian, John Tagg, in John Dexter's production of Trevor Griffiths's The Party.

The only appearance he made on the stage of the new Olivier Theatre was at the royal opening of the new National Theatre building on 25 October 1976.

Later career[link]

Laurence Olivier in 1972, during the production of Sleuth.

Olivier immersed himself even more completely in his work during his later years, reportedly as a way of distracting himself from the guilt he felt at having left his second wife Vivien Leigh.^[5] He began appearing more frequently in films, usually in character parts rather than the leading romantic roles of his early career, and received Academy Award nominations for Sleuth (1972), Marathon Man (1976; Supporting Actor) and The Boys from Brazil (1978). Having been recently forced out of his role as director of the Royal National Theatre, he worried that his family would not be sufficiently provided for in the event of his death, and consequently chose to do many of his later TV special and film appearances on a "pay cheque" basis. He later freely admitted that he was not proud of most of these credits, and noted that he particularly despised the 1982 film Inchon, in which he played the role of General Douglas MacArthur.^[43]

In 1966, Olivier portrayed the Mahdi (Mahommed Ahmed), opposite Charlton Heston as General Gordon in the film Khartoum. The next year, he underwent radiation treatment for prostate cancer and was also hospitalised with pneumonia. For the remainder of his life, he would suffer from many different health problems, including bronchitis, amnesia and pleurisy. In 1974, at age 67, he was found to have dermatomyositis, a degenerative muscle disorder, and nearly died the following year, but he battled through the next decade.

In 1968, he starred as Piotr Ilyich Kamenev, the Soviet Premier, in the movie version of The Shoes of the Fisherman along with Anthony Quinn, Leo McKern, John Gielgud, and Oskar Werner. The movie was nominated for two Academy awards, and was produced during the height of the Cold War. One of Olivier's enduring achievements involved neither stage nor screen. From October 1973 in the UK, Thames Television began to transmit The World at War, a 26-part documentary on the Second World War, which he narrated.

His last decade did contain four notable roles for television. In 1981 he appeared in Brideshead Revisited, the final episode of which revolved entirely around Olivier's character Lord Marchmain, patriarch of the Flyte family, as he came home to die. The next year Olivier was cast in the much-praised television adaptation of John Mortimer's stage play A Voyage Round My Father, in the role of Clifford Mortimer, the author's blind father. In 1975 he appeared as an aging British barrister, opposite Katharine Hepburn, in a made for television film that was filmed in England, but aired in the USA, Love Among the Ruins. Finally, in 1983 Olivier played his last great Shakespearean role, King Lear, for Granada Television. He had played it previously at the Old Vic, in 1946, with little success, but received an Emmy Award for his television portrayal. For Voyage, Olivier received a BAFTA nomination, but for the final episode of Brideshead Revisited and for King Lear he won Emmys in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor categories, respectively.

When presenting the Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards for 1984 (held 25 March 1985), he absent-mindedly presented it by simply stepping up to the microphone and saying Amadeus. He had grown forgetful, and had forgotten to read out the nominees first.^[48]

One of Olivier's last feature films was Wild Geese II (1985), in which, aged 77, he played Rudolf Hess in the sequel to The Wild Geese (1978). According to the biography Olivier by Francis Becket (Haus Publishing, 2005), Hess's son Wolf Rüdiger Hess said Olivier's portrayal of his father was "uncannily accurate".

In 1986, Olivier appeared as the pre-filmed holographic narrator of the West End production of the multimedia Dave Clark rock musical Time. In the same year he appeared in two television serial, Lost Empires opposite Colin Firth and Peter the Great with Maximilian Schell.

On 31 May 1987 the National Theatre put on a 80th birthday tribute pageant, with Olivier, and his family in attendance.^[49] It was held in the National’s Olivier theatre with Alec McCowen as Richard Burbage, Edward Petherbridge as David Garrick, Ben Kingsley as Edmund Kean and Anthony Sher as Henry Irving. Peter Hall as Shakespeare, Peggy Ashcroft as Lillian Baylis,^[50] Maureen Lipman, Albert Finney, Julia McKenzie and Imelda Staunton.^[51]

In 1988 Olivier gave his final performance, aged 81, as a wheelchair-bound old soldier in Derek Jarman's film War Requiem (1989).

Family and death[link]

Olivier died at his home in Steyning, West Sussex, England, from renal failure on 11 July 1989.^[52] He was survived by his son Tarquin from his first marriage, as well as his wife Joan Plowright and their three children. He was cremated and his ashes interred in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, London. Olivier is one of only a few actors, along with David Garrick, Henry Irving,^[53] Ben Jonson and Sybil Thorndike^[54] to have been accorded this honour. Olivier is buried alongside some of the people he portrayed in theatre and film, for example King Henry V, General John Burgoyne and Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding.

Fifteen years after his death, Olivier once again received star billing in a film. Through the use of computer graphics, footage of him as a young man was integrated into the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow in which Olivier "played" the villain.

Sexuality[link]

Since Olivier's death, multiple biographers have produced books about him, several of which include the claim that Olivier was bisexual. Biographer Donald Spoto claimed that Danny Kaye and Olivier were lovers.^[55] Joan Plowright, Olivier's widow, denies the affair with Kaye in her memoir.^[56] Terry Coleman's authorised biography of Olivier suggests a relationship between Olivier and an older actor, Henry Ainley, based on correspondence from Ainley to Olivier although the book disputes that there is any evidence linking Olivier sexually to Kaye.^[5] Olivier's son Tarquin disputed these rumours as 'unforgivable garbage'^[57] and sought to suppress them.

In her 2001 autobiography, Joan Plowright wrote, "Larry tended to shower almost everyone he knew with endearments and demonstrative terms of address. In the same way as the macho Sean Kenny had to put up with ‘Shawnie, darling’, and our son Richard had to endure 'Dickie-Wickie' for a short time, there is a published letter addressing his supposed arch-enemy, Peter Hall, as 'My dear Peterkins'. And Larry could say, 'I adored Danny Kaye', in exactly the same way as he said, 'I adored old Ralphie', without anyone suspecting Ralph Richardson of harbouring carnal desires for his own sex. — No man, alive or dead, has ever claimed to have slept with Larry, though the kiss-and-tell merchants of the female sex have tumbled over themselves to boast of a night or two, here or there."^[58]

In August 2006, on the radio programme Desert Island Discs, Plowright responded to the allegations of Olivier's mistresses and homosexual affairs, at that time feeling the need to defend her husband's memory, stating:

"I don't think there is any need to defend his memory. His performances, his greatness as an artist are there".^[59][60]

And then, referring separately to Olivier's battle with his "demons" which reached a peak in the long years of illness leading up to his death Plowright stated that:

"If a man is touched by genius, he is not an ordinary person. He doesn't lead an ordinary life. He has extremes of behaviour which you understand and you just find a way not to be swept overboard by his demons. You kind of stand apart. You continue your own work and your absorption in the family. And those other things finally don't matter.^[59]

Honours[link]

Olivier was created a Knight Bachelor on 12 June 1947 in the King's Birthday Honours,^[61] becoming the youngest actor so honored.^[62][63] Nominated by Prime Minister Harold Wilson,^[64] he was created a life peer on 13 June 1970 in the Queen's Birthday Honours as Baron Olivier, of Brighton in the County of Sussex, the first actor to be accorded this distinction.^[65][66] He was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1981,^[67] the first actor to be so honoured.^[68] The Laurence Olivier Awards, organised by The Society of London Theatre, were renamed in his honour in 1984.

Though he was a knight, a life peer, and one of the most respected personalities in the industry, Olivier insisted he be addressed as "Larry", which he made clear he preferred to "Sir Laurence" or "Lord Olivier".^[5]

Centenary[link]

On 22 May 2007, to mark the centenary of Olivier's birth, Network Media and ITV released DVD libraries of his work: Network Media—The Laurence Olivier Centenary Collection (10 discs):

• Henry V (1944)
• Richard III (1955)
• King Lear (1983)
• The Ebony Tower (1984)
• Long Day's Journey Into Night (1973)
• The Merchant of Venice (1973)
• Laurence Olivier Presents (complete)
• The South Bank Show: Laurence Olivier, A Life (1982) featuring interviews with Olivier, John Gielgud and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

ITV—Laurence Olivier Shakespeare Collection (7 discs):

• King Lear (1983)
• Henry V (1944)
• Hamlet (1948)
• As You Like It (1936)
• Richard III (1955)
• The Merchant of Venice (1973)

ITV – The Laurence Olivier "Icon" Collection (10 discs):

• Henry V (1944)
• Richard III (1955)
• Hamlet (1948)
• 21 Days (1940)
• That Hamilton Woman (1941)
• 49th Parallel (1941)
• The Demi-Paradise (1943)
• The Boys from Brazil (1978)
• A Little Romance (1979)
• The Jazz Singer (1980)

Both DVD sets include a Michael Parkinson interview with Olivier from the 1970s.

In September 2007, the National Theatre marked the centenary of his birth with a Centenary Celebration. This told the story of Olivier's working life through film and stage extracts, letters, reminiscence and readings; the participants included Eileen Atkins, Claire Bloom, Anna Carteret, Derek Jacobi, Anne-Marie Duff, Lindsay Duncan, Charles Kay, Clive Merrison, Edward Petherbridge, Joan Plowright, Ronald Pickup, Michael Pennington, Rory Kinnear, Samuel West, Antony Sher, Billie Whitelaw and Richard Attenborough. It was directed by Nicholas Hytner.^[69] Prior to the evening celebration, a new statue of Olivier as Hamlet, created by the sculptor Angela Conner and funded by private subscription, was unveiled on the South Bank, next to the National's Theatre Square.

Awards and nominations[link]

Theatre credits and filmography[link]

See also[link]

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars
• Herbert Arnould Olivier
• Sydney Olivier, 1st Baron Olivier

References[link]