In Oct. 2014, Dr. Tobias Capwell came to Southern California for the Tournament of the Phoenix invitational world joust, and Chivalry Today’s program director, Scott Farrell, was asked to coordinate a series of lectures for the public. Dr. Capwell is the arms and armor curator at the Wallace Collection, but he has also been instrumental in the study of the recently excavated skeleton of Richard III.

Knowing that there are many Shakespeare enthusiasts in San Diego, Scott arranged for Dr. Capwell to speak about his experiences working as armor consultant for the TV show “Resurrecting Richard III,” and crafting a set of historically accurate 15th century “kingly” armor for Dominic Smee (pictured above, on left, consulting with Dr. Capwell), a young English history buff who suffers almost the exact same spinal deformation as Richard III. The show aired in the U.S. as part of PBS’s series Secrets of the Dead. (Which we highly recommend watching before listening to Dr. Capwell’s talk. You can watch the episode on-line at the linked PBS website.)

An enthusiastic audience from the San Diego Shakespeare Society was in attendance for Dr. Capwell’s fascinating discussion of how King Richard would have armed, trained, and fought for the English crown at the Battle of Bosworth.

Chivalry Today would like to thank San Diego’s Oasis Lifelong Learning Center for their help in coordinating and promoting this talk.

This is the third in our “Dr. Capwell Trilogy.” To enjoy more of Dr. Capwell’s talk, check out the video presentation of Dr. Capwell’s talk Building Medieval Armor: An Operator’s Guide, and his interview with Scott Farrell in the September 2014 edition of the Conversations with Chivalry Today podcast.