A sordid song and dance over Richard III's bones Dr John Ashdown-Hill, the independent academic whose research led to the identification of Richard III's remains, has said he should be given a Catholic burial. Canadian-born Mike Ibsen, whose DNA helped identify the remains (he being a descendant of Richard's sister), is rallying signatures to keep the body in Leicester. Wouldn't Richard want to be buried with his wife, though, in Westminster Abbey? Queen Ann lies there in a grave that is unmarked, if enviably close to the remains of St Edward the Confessor. Only in 1960 was a bronze plaque put on the wall to indicate that she lay nearby. That is why, to me, the argument over Richard III's burial place is so absurd. Yes, I know that, every time it comes up, a snowdrift of readers" letters engulfs my colleagues, who have to be dug out with the help of specially trained virtual sniffer-dogs. But the fact is that most people care nothing for where monarchs are buried and do not even know their locations. Once in a lifetime we might pay the £18 - yes, £18 - to tour Westminster Abbey, and perhaps remember being touched by those two sisters at odds, Mary I and Elizabeth I, being buried in the same tomb. On Mary's grave, during the whole of her younger sister's reign, the stones from broken altars were piled. "Here rest we two sisters," the Latin inscription now says, "in the hope of one resurrection." But there are an awful lot of monarchs in the Abbey - and afterwards, are we sure in our memories who is there? Take a star like Charles I. Is he there? No he isn't. He's in St George's Chapel, Windsor, with most of the Georges. George I, though, was buried in a castle in Hanover. We bombed it, and his remains were reburied. There is something to be said for dispersing monarchs. The tomb of Bad King John gives a frisson to a visit to Worcester cathedral. Gloucester cathedral has the tomb of Edward II, whose chum Piers Gaveston was buried in the Dominican priory at Kings Langley (smashed up in the Reformation). Kings Langley is also where Richard III's great-grandfather is buried, at All Saints church. Perhaps room could be found for Richard there, too. Trains from Euston run to Kings Langley every half hour and the journey time is only 26 minutes. Yet I suspect that, once the excitement subsided, fewer would travel to Kings Langley than bother to visit Peterborough cathedral, where the well-kept tomb of Catherine of Aragon is to be seen. She had died at Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, and was buried in the abbey at Peterborough. She didn't end up in a car park, because Peterborough abbey, unlike Greyfriars, Leicester, wasn't demolished, but turned into a cathedral five years after her death by her estranged husband Henry VIII. In this swirling mêlée over Richard's bones hangs the fact in English law that no one may own human remains. They merely have custody of them. At the moment Richard's are in the custody of the University of Leicester. But they are being used by over-excited parties as a banner. It is not a pretty sight.