The Friday Digest brings you the best of the week's history news gathered from the experts:
Solving Stonehenge – With the recent summer solstice, focus is once again turned upon Stonehenge and the mystery that still shrouds this iconic monument. Over 250 years of speculation have led to the widely held belief that prehistoric spirituality was focused on the theatre of the celestial dome.
The second dig of Leicester has commenced this week after the first dig unearthed the findings of Richard III.
Workers began to remove a Victorian wall at the city council car park where Richard III was found last August. The demolition will allow University of Leicester archaeologists to continue their explorations of the buried Franciscan friary known as Greyfriars, which was home to Richard III's remains for more than 500 years. Led by archaeologist Richard Buckley, the team will excavate the church and pay special attention to the exhumation of a 600-year-old stone coffin, which is believed to contain the remains of a medieval knight called Sir William Moton. City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said: "I have no doubt that there are more exciting discoveries to be made within the old Grey Friars church".
There has been much speculation in the news lately of which famous figures should feature on British bank notes. With Sir Winston Churchill set to feature on the five pound note, replacing Elizabeth Fry and the possibility of Jane Austen to feature on the ten pound note, replacing Charles Darwin, this is a topic which has sparked much debate!
Wimbledon is said to be the world's oldest tennis tournament and regarded by many as the most prestigious. But the Wimbledon tennis championships as we know them today owe much to the vision of one man, who came from a tiny Leicestershire village.
George Hillyard, from Thorpe Satchville, near Melton, was married to Wimbledon champion Blanche Bingley. He became secretary of Wimbledon in 1907 and was the "lead man" in setting up the tournament's present home.
Mick Aston, a former resident academic on Channel 4's Time Team, has died at the age of 66. He appeared on the show, which sees experts carry out archaeological digs, from its inception in 1994 until 2011. Professor Aston had appeared as the senior archaeologist in 19 series of the programme, he was also one of the authors of Recreating the Past, published by The History Press.
A former airman who was supposed to be on a World War II plane that crashed killing three men has visited the site for the first time. Royal Navy airman Frank Walton visited Great Gully, above Wastwater in the Lake District, where the plane went down during an exercise night-flight, in 1945.
Members of Keighley Sub Aqua Club found the Royal Navy Grumman Avenger aircraft's engine block in the lake, during a dive in 2013. Divers returned in April to search the lake, which is England's deepest, to try and find the aircraft's tail section. They did not find it but are to return in August to try again.
Re-writing Shakespeare - Jeanette Winterson is set to write a "cover version" of Shakespeare's late play, The Winter's Tale, as part of a "major" new project reimagining Shakespeare's canon for a 21st-century audience. Following the current trend for modern retellings of classic stories – Val McDermid, Joanna Trollope and Curtis Sittenfeld are all currently writing reworkings of Jane Austen – the Shakespeare project will launch in 2016, coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death.
Novels about Shakespeare are set to be published, written by Bartholomew Daniels, and purporting to be based on the Bard's own journals, the books will feature Shakespeare as the central character, investigating the death of his wealthy patron and uncovering a conspiracy that goes to the heart of the Elizabethan court.
Which history and publishing stories have you enjoyed reading this week?