I’ve just returned from a trip to Greece and Turkey and learned a few interesting things about those two countries. First thing to realise is that Turkey, under the Ottoman Empire, ruled Greece for several centuries. That empire was Muslim while Greece was majority eastern orthodox Christian. The Parthenon – the glory of ancient Greece…
From Hannibal Lecter to Norman Bates, Fagin to Bluebeard – many fictional monsters committing terrible crimes in the pages of some of your favourite novels were based on real life criminals. So, which literary villains were inspired by murderers and robbers known to the police? And why would authors want to use these characters in…
All over Britain and Europe, I’ve seen depictions of hell painted on the walls of medieval churches clearly intended to terrify the faithful as they attended mass. Centuries ago, most people were illiterate. So, the consequences of sin needed to be relayed pictorially. There was the gaping mouth of hell. Devils prodding the damned towards…
A Chinese man who believed he was Jesus caused the deaths of tens of millions of people. Why wasn’t this taught in my history class at school? And yet it happened. An astonishing story of a messianic leader in 19th century China who left a trail of slaughter right across the country. This is the…
Homer was an ancient Greek writer who wrote The Odyssey. Did you know that even that statement can’t be taken for granted? Some academics believe Homer may never have existed. Or that The Odyssey could have been the product of several hands. As for Homer’s birth and death details – don’t bother looking because that’s…
As a teenager, I went to confession at our local Roman Catholic church and struggled to find much to confess. From the back of my mind, I dredged up some petty misdemeanours and was told by the priest in the confessional box to recite three Our Fathers, Three Glory Be’s, and Three Hail Marys. The…
When Errol Christie first sat down with me to tell his life story, I wasn’t prepared for the journey that lay ahead. I knew the headline version — British boxing’s nearly man, the gifted middleweight who should have been a world champion. What I didn’t know was the depth of the world he’d navigated to…
From lead-laced face powder to jawline-shattering surgery, the lengths people have gone to look beautiful have often been lethal. We are still prepared to use dangerous cosmetics and dubious medical procedures to look amazing. Our ancestors made the same mistake. Here is the full, unflinching story. Beauty has always come at a price. Sometimes that…
My grandmother – ‘granny’ to me – was an Irish woman who had been a school teacher before retirement, but in her last years, liked nothing better than to fill my young head with tales from Irish mythology. Norma McMahon (born McEnhill), 1909-1975, was a fiery product of Ulster (Omagh, county Tyrone to be exact)….
Adolf Hitler remains one of history’s most studied and reviled figures — yet beyond the textbook horror of the Holocaust and World War II lies a more unsettling portrait. The personal psychology, the obsessions, the blind spots, and the bizarre contradictions of the man who dragged the world into catastrophe are, in many ways, more…