Madeleine Pelling

What if walls could talk? For historian Madeleine Pelling, they can – if you know where to look. An aristocrat carves obscenities into a tavern window with his diamond ring. A shopkeeper's daughter sketches customers with a piece of coal. A desperate highwayman, condemned to death, scratches his initials into his prison cell door. Writing on the Wall goes in...

Here lies Fanny Lynes, whose whispers from beyond the grave set London alight with scandal. Here swings Mary Bateman, who lived a life of lies—and died a prophetess and murderer. Here stands Mary Willcocks. Or is it Anne Burgess? Or Princess Caraboo, from the distant island of Javasu? A ghost. A witch. A princess. This is a story of those...