Victoria Shepherd

A thrilling history of mudlarkers, charlatans, experts and chancers – the underbelly of the trade in antiques and jewels. June 1912. A heavy ball of clay is deposited in an antique shop in South London. It looks distinctly out of place, surrounded by Ancient Egyptian bowls, Japanese swords and Roman coins. This is the collection of George Fabian Lawrence –...

From the presenter of the Radio 4 hit series A History of Delusions. Why would someone wake up and claim they’re Napoleon? Or believe they have been turned into a wolf and demand to be fed raw meat? For centuries, we’ve dismissed delusions as a problem for the shrinks to sort out in distant asylums. But delusions are more than...

Fascinating and compassionate – Horatio Clare The King of France, thinking he was made of glass, was terrified he might shatter... and he wasn’t alone. After the Emperor met his end at Waterloo, an epidemic of Napoleons piled into France’s asylums. Throughout the nineteenth century, dozens of middle-aged women tried to convince their physicians that they were, in fact, dead....