Killer Queen: Meet Queen Elfrida – The Original Wicked Stepmother
History has seen some incredible, cut-throat politics and lurid scandals, including the reign of Read More
Killer Queen: Meet Queen Elfrida – The Original Wicked Stepmother
History has seen some incredible, cut-throat politics and lurid scandals, including the reign of Queen Elgiva: a teenage Saxon princess who was caught enjoying a threesome (along with her mother!), in the bed of King Eadwig, on the day of his...
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Staked Through the Heart and Buried at the Crossroads – The Profane Burial of Suicides
I uncovered a curious tale about a scrubby patch of land while writing a book on the folklore and history of East Anglia. Marked on modern maps as Lushbush, you pass it heading eastwards out of the South Norfolk town of Harleston, England.A Stake...
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From Piso to the Baby Drusilla: The Legal Aspects of Damnation Memoriae - the Punishment of Non-Existence
The ancient Roman decree of damnatio memoriae (“damnation of one’s memory”) was a mark of great disgrace and a punishment, deemed worse than execution, for an ancient Roman. The object of the punishment was to cancel every trace of the...
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The Violent Life and Times of Roger Bigod – A Medieval Player of the Game of Thrones?
For almost 250 years, from the time of the Norman Conquest of England in AD 1066, one of the most important families in the Eastern Counties were the Bigods. In later years they would become the Earls of Norfolk and so powerful they could defy the...
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Confessions of a Teenage GhostHunter: Keeping the St Marks Eve Vigil and Looking for the Ghost of Sir Walter Calverley
When I was a student Leeds University, in the north of England, (this was in the early 1970s) I used to go on nocturnal ghost-hunting forays with one of my flatmates, a medical student called Ralph. I had the notebook and a typewriter. He had the...
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