The Daughter of Time

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history.

Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains – a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England's throne?

Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower.

Josephine Tey was the pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh, the Scottish author who rose to fame through her Inspector Alan Grant crime novels. Grant was a dogged and diligent Detective Inspector in the CID at Scotland Yard, and one of the first fictional detectives to be a Scotland Yard Police Officer.

Her first mystery novel, which also introduced Inspector Grant, The Man in the Queue, was published in 1929 and was awarded the Dutton Mystery Prize when published in America.

The Daughter of Time, the fifth Inspector Grant novel in the six book series, was named as the greatest crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association.

Rather unusually for such a successful Golden Age author, she never joined the illustrious Detection Club – probably because she delighted in subverting the conventions of the genre, thereby breaking the Clubs 'commandments'.

A shy and private person, she never married and eluded the attentions of biographers until 2015. Josephine Tey died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.