The children of North End, Boston, play in the shadow of an enormous steel tank of molasses. The thick, sticky sugar syrup is being used to make munitions for the First World War. When a worker ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 does a ...