Books

William Shakespeare’s First Folio (Image: Getty) To be, or not to be… the most famous writer of all time. When it comes to William Shakespeare, that is not the question. The love that endures for England’s national poet, the son of a humble glove maker from the West Midlands, really …

Cillian Murphy as J Robert Oppenheimer (Image: ) The summer blockbuster film Oppenheimer has given millions a fresh understanding of how and why America raced to develop atom bombs, ultimately bringing an end to World War Two. Director Christopher Nolan’s epic concentrates on the turbulent life of theoretical physicist J. …

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart at a party, 1951 (Image: Getty) Squinting through narrowed eyes beneath a fedora, a cigarette hanging from his thin lips, his world-weary expression forged by hard liquor and hard-bitten women in smoke-filled bars, Humphrey Bogart was Hollywood’s iconic tough guy. In classic movies from The …

Ambrose Parry: Marisa Haetzman and Chris Brookmyre (Image: ) Smothering a victim’s face with a chloroform-doused rag is favoured by filmmakers and writers as a dramatic way to knock out a character fast…which irritates anaesthetist-turned-novelist Marisa Haetzman, as science has long proven this to be complete nonsense. “It takes about …

First we have a fun-filled adventure, How I Became a Dog Called Midnight by the bestselling author and actor Ben Miller. This body-swap story follows George as one night there’s a magical mix-up and he swaps places with his lovable hound Midnight! Can the two friends save the day before the clock …

Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs (Image: Getty) Great train robber Ronnie Biggs was relaxing in his trunks and thinking of the £35,000 fee a newspaper interview had just netted him, when he heard the knock at the door he had been dreading for nearly a decade. Biggs instantly recognised the …

Today Belinda is a registered mental health nurse and director at the Care Quality Commission (Image: Getty) When mental health nurse Belinda Black arrived at work one day in the early 1990s she was perturbed to see one of her long-term patients lining up to board the hospital minibus. Josephine …

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Image: Getty) Peering through a magnifying glass beneath his signature deerstalker hat, sucking on a blackened clay pipe, Sherlock Holmes remains the world’s greatest literary detective, immortalised in more than a century of books, films and television. The Baker Street sleuth’s preternatural powers of observation and …

Author Steve Cavanagh (Image: ) Before you seek revenge, dig two graves, including one for yourself. Or so warns the ancient proverb commonly attributed to Confucius. It’s a cautionary message author Steve Cavanagh pondered while writing his new book: how far can a person go to avenge themselves before becoming …

The Rolling Stones’ singer Mick Jagger (Image: Getty) What is it with pop stars and ageing? Roger Daltrey sang the immortal line from The Who’s hit My Generation – “Hope I die before I get old” – in October 1965. Pete Townshend wrote that when he was 20. Lennon and …