Forsooth! Joy for Richard III as Leicester shock world

LONDON: There was no shortage of superlatives on Tuesday after little Leicester City were crowned champions of the world's richest soccer league. New fans sprung up worldwide overnight, but few could explain the season's extraordinary events.



A Bangkok monk said the power of Buddhism had lifted the Thai-owned club to victory, while some fans closer to home gave thanks to King Richard III, saying his reinterment in Leicester last year had sparked the magic.

In a soon-to-be-published book King Power, which also happens to be the name of the group that owns the soccer club, a re-imagined Richard III offers his Middle English analysis of Leicester's rise to glory under manager Claudio Ranieri.



The author, who writes under the king's pseudonym, answered questions from Reuters in language somewhere close to that of another icon from the English Midlands, William Shakespeare, who wrote the tragedy Richard III and who died 400 years ago.