HOW will history judge you, if you are remembered at all? What will be your legacy?

For most of us we are words on the wind, carried away and lost forever once we die.

For a few, however, their memory lives on. If you’re Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Princess Diana, your memory is mostly revered.

But for others, posterity is not always so kind.

I was thinking about this prompted by the reburial of the remains of Richard III.

As a journalist I know there is always more than one side to a story.

Right of reply is a key tool a journalist has to defend the act of publishing something about someone that is less than complimentary.

Without allowing a subject that right, the journalist runs the risk of being sued for defamation, unless what is being published is irrefutably true or that person is dead (you can’t defame a corpse).

But some historic figures never get their ‘day in court’ to set the record straight.

Richard III was one such figure.

For 500 years he has been portrayed as an evil hunchback child killer.

This distorted image was put about by Tudor propagandists while William Shakespeare must take credit for perpetuating this version with his history play.

We’ve all seen the over-the-top characterisation, most famously by Sir Laurence Olivier and parodied by Peter Sellers reciting the lines to A Hard Day’s Night in the style of Olivier’s Richard III.

But modern historians say this is an unfair and inaccurate portrait.

History is often the version of the ‘truth’ as written by the victor, the tyrant, the group with an axe to grind. A subjective truth.

King Richard’s body was found under a council car park in the centre of Leicester three years ago.

The skeleton has helped to dispel many of the myths surrounding this much maligned monarch.

The mystery of whether he was a hunchback was solved when the skeleton was found to have a curvature of the spine, not the pillow shoved under the jacket beloved of hammy Shakespearean actors.

According to Dr Phil Stone, chairman of the Richard III society, the king was an innovative monarch, some of whose achievements helped shape our judicial system and national sense of fair play.

He introduced a very early form of legal aid, for example.

The earthly remains of the king are lying in state in Leicester Cathedral, where the public can view the coffin.

The reburial ceremony will be held at the cathedral today (Thursday), led by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

Let’s hope that when the remains are reburied the lies and untruths about Richard are also laid to rest.