jump to navigation
  • Billesley and Shakespeare: Books, Weddings and Fornication November 8, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Billesley and Shakespeare: Books, Weddings and Fornication

    Many times on Strange History we have looked at the possibility that a small community is capable of remembering a tradition over decades, generations and even centuries without any recourse to writing. And Beach has just stumbled on a possible example of this in the deep English village of Billesley in Warwickshire. There are fewer […]

    Shakespeare’s First Anne October 29, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Shakespeare's First Anne

    Earlier this year we publicised that famous inventor of the compass, Flavio Gioia, who never, in fact, existed. Today, we offer a parallel tale from English literature: the story of Shakespeare’s first love. We refer here not to that hated appendage, Anne Hathaway, who married the bard after he got her pregnant and eventually got […]