Literature

Actor William Gillette playing the detective Sherlock Holmes. (Photo by Gillette/London Stereoscopic Company/Getty Images)

11 things you (probably) didn’t know about Sherlock Holmes

Podcast Website large Miranda Seymour

The women behind Lord Byron

Richard Burbage

Richard Burbage: The vanishing act of the star who outshone Shakespeare

Portrait of William Shakespeare by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about William Shakespeare

Krystyna Skarbeck, also called Christine Granville

Second World War

My history hero: Krystyna Skarbek

From The Library

Andrew Dickson on Shakespeare's greatest actor podcast

Shakespeare’s greatest actor

English actor Laurence Olivier as Richard III in a production of Shakespeare's play of the same name. (Photo by Felix Man/Picture Post/Getty Images)

Shakespeare’s best (or worst) villains

Edwin the Scribe. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Unusual things found in medieval manuscripts

A portrait of Samuel Pepys

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Samuel Pepys

Accounts of the Trojan War ascribed to Homer were the most revered chronicles in the Ancient Greek historical canon – but, Paul Cartledge suggests, they may be entirely fictional. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Is there any truth in the tale of Troy?

From The Library

American novelist John Updike

My history hero: John Updike (1932-2009)

From The Library

© Journey's End

First World War

Journey’s End: behind the scenes of the new First World War film

Robert Burns. (Getty Images)

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Robert Burns

Podcast-Website-large-Fiona-Sampson_0-97173d2

Mary Shelley and her monster