An adolescent growth spurt that went wrong caused King Richard III’s physical deformity but it did not give him a hunchback, a limp or a withered arm as commonly portrayed in Shakespearian renditions of the last Plantagenet king, a study has found.

Medical researchers have diagnosed that Richard, whose skeletal remains were discovered beneath a council car park in Leicester last year, suffered from adolescent-onset scoliosis, when the spine curves to one side, which he developed in late childhood.

A detailed CT scan of the king’s vertebrae has enabled scientists to reconstruct his deformity on computer, enabling them to build a three-dimensional polymer model of his spine showing a pronounced spiral curvature to his right side in the middle of his back at the level of his chest.