Utterly interesting

The mind of Kurt Vonnegut, like the protagonist of his best-known novel  Slaughterhouse-Five , must have got "unstuck in time" somewhere...

Most people know Victor Hugo as the towering literary figure behind Les Misérables  and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame , a man whose pen...

It was just before dawn on 12 April 1980, when a group of barely-known army sergeants slipped into Liberia’s Executive Mansion and...

“Surely all respectable and law-abiding citizens are sick of the very name of ruffianism in Birmingham…” – Letter to the Birmingham Daily...

When people talk about Elvis Presley’s finest moment, they usually land on the obvious: that first explosive single in 1954, “That’s All...

On a misty morning off the coast of Nagasaki, a concrete island rises suddenly from the sea like a warship adrift in time. Locals call it...

In 1919, Omaha erupted in violence. Will Brown was lynched, the courthouse set ablaze, and the mayor nearly hanged. This is the full story.

Ever wondered why English is so wildly inconsistent? Why dough , tough  and bough  look like cousins but sound like strangers? Or why you...

It started with a raid. The kind of thing that had happened a hundred times before. But something snapped that night. Maybe it was the...

On a quiet Sunday in October 1983, the Laitner family home in Dore, an affluent suburb of Sheffield, had been filled with joy. They were hosting a wedding reception for their daughter Suzanne, celebrating with relatives and friends, toasting a new chapter in their family story. But in the hours that followed, their home would become the scene of one of the most chilling and senseless crimes in British criminal history, committed by a man whose name would come to represent the

In 1929, long before the Galapagos Islands became synonymous with eco-tourism, conservation cruises, and Instagrammable marine iguanas, they were considered remote, harsh, and largely uninhabitable. That, of course, was precisely what attracted Friedrich Ritter. Ritter was a Berlin physician with a sharp intellect, strong opinions, and a pronounced distaste for modern civilisation. A follower of Nietzsche , he believed that contemporary life, brimming with what he saw as wea

If you ever find yourself romanticising the glitzy outlaws of the 1920s, spare a thought for Arthur Barry, a polite burglar whose life...

Long before we had celebrity voices telling us when to take the next left or warning us about average speed cameras, drivers had to rely...

Most career criminals make headlines for their violence or brash defiance. Jeffrey Manchester, however, earned his notoriety by being unfailingly polite, oddly considerate, and for living in places most people would never dream of calling home. Nicknamed “Roofman” by baffled detectives, Manchester’s story is a study in improbable break-ins, makeshift hideouts, and a charm that left even his victims scratching their heads. From Schoolboy to Soldier Jeffrey Manchester grew up i

‘He was young and handsome…his mother’s hope.’ He was young and handsome, his mother’s pride and joy, but he died in torment, blind, sick...

On 21 June 1675, a foundation stone was quietly laid in the heart of London, an unassuming act that would, over centuries, come to...

Imagine sitting in a dingy consulting room sometime around 1900. You’ve come to see a doctor because your skin has erupted in angry sores, your joints ache unbearably, and there’s a constant buzzing in your ears. The diagnosis, whispered with discomfort, is syphilis. There is no easy cure, no guarantee of recovery, and the treatment itself might kill you faster than the disease. This was once the grim reality for millions. Long before the humble penicillin mould transformed

ROCKY (1978) by Edward Lutczyn If you’ve ever stood in a cinema queue staring at the same old posters — moody close-ups, explosions...

Let us drift back, if you will, to the languid, sun-bleached summers of 1936 and 1937, a moment suspended on the cusp of catastrophe, to...

In the autumn of 1998, a tragic act of violence in suburban New York captured the growing tension at the heart of America’s abortion...

It’s often said that Chicago built its empire on the backs of immigrants and the muscle of men willing to do what others wouldn’t dare....

When Lord of the Flies  first arrived on bookshop shelves on 17 September 1954, it did so with little fanfare and modest expectations....

In the early summer of 1982, Roberto Calvi, chairman of Italy’s largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, vanished from the intricate world...