Was the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel – the story of a woodcutter’s children abandoned in the woods and left at the mercy of a witch – in fact, early true crime? A hit book – The Truth About ...

In the late 1930s, a Dutch civil servant, Jacobus Lentz, designed a near-unforgeable identity card. In 1940, the Dutch government rejected his proposal as too intrusive. Weeks later, Germany occupied ...

Last week, Cautionary Tales told the tragic story of Derek Bentley, exploring Britain’s troubled relationship with capital punishment. Across the Atlantic, Revisionist History has also been ...

The first term of my master’s degree in economics was an alarming experience. The econometrics was bewildering. The macroeconomics was even more mysterious. Everything was drenched in ...

An amateurish burglary in 1950s London ends in murder. One of the men involved is a 19-year-old named Derek Bentley. Bentley has the understanding of a child – and he wasn’t the killer. But the ...

In 1983, a plane takes off from Ottawa with less than half the required fuel on board. As the engines cut out one by one, the pilot is left with a ticking clock and an impossible task. But what ...

In 1799, the German adventurer-scientist Alexander von Humboldt set out on what would prove to be a five-year exploration of South America. Young, independently wealthy and almost absurdly ...

In the gilded court of Louis XIV, 17th Century France, manners are everything. Where to sit, how to eat, what to wear – any misstep is costly. No one knows this better than François Vatel, the ...

When the Financial Times uncovered the billion-dollar Wirecard fraud, it seemed like the story was over. But then the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Jan Marsalek, vanished – leaving behind clues ...

It’s D-Day and the Allies are about to invade Nazi-occupied France. For the landings to succeed, American soldiers on Omaha Beach will have to break through some formidable coastal defences – Hitler’s ...