William Shakespeare: gangster

You wouldn’t think it by looking at the long line of Shakespeare biographies on the library shelves, but everything we know for sure about the life of the world’s most revered playwright would fit comfortably on a few pages. Yes, we know that a man named Will Shakespeare was born in the Warwickshire town of [...]

Erotic secrets of Lord Byron’s tomb

It was hot and dusty in the crypt, and it had been hard work breaking into it. Now the vicar had gone, along with his invited guests, to take his supper. The churchwarden and two workmen armed with spades were left to wait for their return, loitering by the grave they had come to examine [...]

Emily Brontë: a fantasy-prone personality

More than a quarter of a century has passed since a couple of psychologists named Theodore X. Barber and Sheryl Wilson first published their important study into the central role that a percipient’s fantasy life plays in the nature, frequency and detail of the paranormal claims they make. According to this theory, ‘fantasy-proneness’ (the term [...]