In the past few years, amateur paedophile hunters have rarely been far from the headlines of Britain’s tabloid newspapers, writes author Carolyn Kirby. “The nation is in the grip of an extraordinary phenomenon involving possibly thousands of have-a-go investigators,” said the Daily Mail in June last year. Sometimes caught on the wrong side of the […]
Clean Minds, Dirty Books
What’s the dirtiest book you’ve ever read? Writers’ research can lead to awkward places. “Oh yes?” says my wife, glimpsing a passage of Walter’s My Secret Life on my screen. “You’re ‘researching’ again, are you?” Private Case, Public Scandal by Peter Fryer was the peculiar tome that pointed me to the explosion in the Victorian […]
She Wolves, Night Moths and Tomb Whores
Elisabeth Storrs explores the complex rules of prostitution in Ancient Rome. Prostitution is