Of greatest concern, however, is where Jones seeks to abandon the literal interpretation of topographical and other military detail in the primary accounts of battles. He claims that many are not representations of real events but rather were added by the chroniclers and other authors – just as Hall adds the spurious speeches of the main protagonists at Bosworth. This is an important an issue to which we must return in Chapter 3 and 4.

We have now considered all four sites that had been suggested for the battlefield, together with the various arguments presented in support of each. The challenge we faced in September 2005 was to collect evidence that allowed us to decide between these alternatives – or to show that the battle was actually fought somewhere else. The six chapters that follow explain how the Bosworth problem was solved.