My kingdom for a horse: Richard III speaks again

A facial reconstruction of Richard III was turned into an avatar

A "living and breathing" King Richard III who can speak his own words is being unveiled.

Using state-of-the-art technology, an avatar of the medieval king's head will be on display at York Theatre Royal - giving a "literal voice" to the long-dead historical figure.

Richard III was king of England from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, age 32, and his remains were discovered in a car park in Leicester in 2012.

Vocal coach Yvonne Morley-Chisholm said the project, called A Voice For King Richard III, first came about as after-dinner entertainment at a conference for vocal coaches.

She said: “It fell to me to provide the entertainment. And I thought well, ‘We’re in Leicester, better do something – haven’t they found that chap under a carpark’ and it started there.

“I got two actors along that night. I got someone who would give us a rip-roaringly Shakespearean standard English… and then I thought ‘I wonder what the real man was like’.

“So I contacted the Richard III society and they sent along Sally Henshaw to talk about the real man, but the pivotal point was when she said they had reconstructed his face.”

Prof David Crystal taught actor Thomas Dennis how to speak like Richard

A team at Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University created an avatar based on the reconstruction of Richard III's head with the help of a cranio-facial expert.

His voice - a "fascinating mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar" - has been created by Professor David Crystal, a leading linguist in 15th Century pronunciation, who said it will still be "very intelligible to modern ears”.

Ms Morley-Chisholm said Prof Crystal had “worked out the original pronunciation to 90% accuracy”.

She said by studying Richard’s facial muscles and expressions she eventually found an actor with a similar face who became the basis of the voice.

She said: “You have to find a man with a face very like that face. You have to train him in the original pronunciation, the accent, the personality. And we’ve done that, his name is Thomas Dennis.”

Mr Dennis’s face was also turned into an avatar at the Face Lab.

“When Thomas lifts an eyebrow, Richard lifts an eyebrow,” said Ms Morley-Chisholm.

“We took some time deciding which words of Richards we would have. Because you’ll see him on a screen.

“You’ll see like a film of Richard breathing, thinking, blinking, talking, his personality, his pronunciation, hear Thomas’s voice in the right pitch range.”

Yvonne Morley-Chisholm and Prof Caroline Wilkinson

Historian Philippa Langley MBE, who led the research, said: “To help bring Richard to life, research into his character focused on contemporary descriptions from his own lifetime including private letters and a diary.”

The project has been 10 years in the making.

"The results corresponded directly with similar public descriptions offering a probability bordering on certainty of his recognised character from his lifetime."

She added: "The results will be a technological, scientific and historic break-through."

A Voice For King Richard III will premiere on 17 November from 12:00 until 18:00 GMT.

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