Continents

Few outside of Romania and Bulgaria would have heard of their folk hero Vlad Tepes if it had not been for an Irish writer named Abraham Stoker. Bram (as he is more commonly known) was inspired by the tale, and it led to him researching…

Life on the frontier has always had a romantic air. Where civilisation ends, and wilderness begins, then there is room for tales of people we can relate to; having adventures we can only dream of. Still, every frontier comes to an end,…

James Stuart thought he was better than you. This isn’t a base slander on my part, this was his honest academic opinion. In The True Law of Free Monarchies, James explains that kings (such as himself) had been chosen by God to rule over…

Some movie characters can transcend through time and rightfully claim their place in the pantheon of popular culture and one such character which has achieved this is Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. One hundred years ago the world was first…

Ridiculous. Amusing. Laughable. These are the first words that came to mind when I saw this image of the sea monster who resembled a monk from 1642. I assumed it to be a Renaissance fantasy imagined by a sailor who had one too many…

The French philosopher Simone Weil wrote in 1943: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” In writing this, she was speaking as one of those who had fled the approaching Nazi forces, against…

The jolly scofflaw is a common figure of admiration in society. The outlaws of Sherwood Forest, the highwaymen of Regency England, the outlaws of the Wild West, the “apaches” of the Parisien underworld, all enjoyed the glory of living…

Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, known to history as Gilles de Rais, was born in 1405 into one of the wealthiest families in France. At his birth the Hundred Years War had been raging between England and France for 68 years, and it would rage…

In the early part of the 20th century, forensic science was beginning to come into its own. The field had a rocky start, with a combination of initial over-confidence and sloppy practises eroding public confidence in the ability of…

There are names we all recognise, even if what we know about them is entirely wrong. So it is with Aleister Crowley. Sometimes described as a Satanist , and during his lifetime labelled “the wickedest man in the world” , in truth…