When the construction of a bridge built to link the Balkans to Europe is mysteriously sabotaged, an old ballad starts making the rounds at local taverns. The bards sing of a legend - a woman immured in a castle wall to prevent it from falling. Some say the bridge is being damaged by local ferrymen, others blame vengeful water spirits.

From Eugenia Stanhope who sold Lord Chesterfield's scandalous letters, to the autocratic vicar who held the same parish from age 28 to 82, from the just-literate wife of a parish clerk who wrote riddles in his registers, to the cow-keeper who farmed 226 acres in Hornsey till he sold them profitably when the railways came through.

The young D'Artagnan and the legendary musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis are 'the inseparables' - ready to sacrifice everything in a duel or game of dice in order to defend their honour or that of the King and Queen of France.

From the deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald to the directness of Hemingway, from Kipling's view of France to the French view of Kipling, from the National Treasure Status of George Orwell to the despair of Michel Houellebecq, the author considers what fiction is, and what it can do.

Here John Turner Was Cast Away In A Heavy Snow Storm In The Night In Or About The Year 1755 The Print Of A Woman's Shoe Was Found By His Side In The Snow Where He Lay Dead This enigmatic memorial stone, high on the bank of a prehistoric Pennine track in Cheshire, is a mystery that lives on in the hill farms today.

A fog is creeping through the weary streets of London - so too are whispers that the Tiger is back in town, undetected by the law, untroubled by morals. And the rumours are true: Jack Havoc, charismatic outlaw, knife-wielding killer and ingenious jail-breaker, is on the loose once again.