In Withnail and I, one of the most quoted scenes in British cinema has Withnail drink lighter fluid, straight from the can, out of sheer desperation for a drink. It plays as pitch-black comedy. It also really happened. The man who actually drank the lighter fluid was Vivian MacKerrell, a jobbing actor who shared a squalid flat in Camden with the young Bruce Robinson in the late 1960s, and who inadvertently became the basis for one of the most beloved characters in British fil

Diego Maradona is remembered as one of the greatest footballers who ever lived, a man who could win a World Cup practically on his own and turn a stadium of 80,000 people into believers with one run at goal. But strip away the highlight reels and you're left with one of the messiest, most scandal-soaked private lives in sporting history. Cocaine addiction that nearly killed him more than once. A years-long entanglement with one of Naples' most violent mafia clans. Eight ackno

Poland's Second World War produced more than its fair share of stories that sound made up. There's a bear who hauled artillery shells at Monte Cassino, and then there's Krystyna Skarbek, a countess from Warsaw who skied across a mountain range with intelligence hidden in her glove linings, talked a Gestapo officer into freeing three condemned prisoners, and remains, decades on, the longest-serving female agent Britain's wartime secret service ever fielded. She went by several