Mike Shepherd
When Brave Men Shudder: The Scottish Origins of Dracula
Introduction by Dacre Stoker.
Gripped by the demon of inspiration, he entered into the mind of the infamous Count Dracula…
The year: 1895. The place: a remote Scottish fishing village. Bram Stoker is feverishly penning his cadaverous tale of vampire horror as his family look on aghast. Everything was conspiring to produce those words of gore… everything. What were the supernatural influences he found in the village? Who was the mystic poet who dominated his restless thoughts? Why was the pagan world trying to communicate with him?
Family memories, maps, photographs and newly-opened archives provide the untold story of how Dracula came to be written. Long untold and now never to be forgotten, this is the tale of a book that shocked the world, a book that would make the brave shudder…
The World Makers: Who Gets To The Top And Why
Look through the keyholes in the doors of life – not any old doors – but the doors of the extremely ambitious. Driven people; people who, with extreme single-mindedness, will do anything and everything to get to the top. This book will show you what they get up to and how they think.
You will hear their stories, much of it in their own words – people with huge personalities, many of whom carried out the most outrageous acts. Find out, for example, who broke Michelangelo’s nose and why he did it; why was the largest church in the world built in the African bush? What was the world’s most expensive diamond doing hanging around a dog’s neck? And what was the reason everyone in a modern capital city of two million inhabitants was forced at gunpoint to become peasants in the countryside?
But above all, a big story emerges from all of this. Those who aim to get to the top create the framework of our society. They are the world-makers. And the rest of us have to somehow fit in with what these ego-driven people do. It’s their story, but it’s our story too. Find out more: read this book.
Slains Castle’s Secret History : Warlords, Winston Churchill, & Dracula
Slains Castle, a remote castle in the north of Scotland with shadowy links to Bram Stoker and Dracula. A castle with secrets. Big secrets…
Secrets now revealed in a series of extraordinary stories. Although reading like a thriller, Slains Castle’s Secret History is not fiction. Everything in this book actually happened.
Here’s just a select few tasty morsels to tempt you:
What connects Slains Castle with the Spanish Armada of 1588?
When a French secret agent visited Slains Castle in 1705 and 1707, how did he inadvertently influence the formation of the United Kingdom?
What was the mysterious black rain of Slains?
What happened when Bram Stoker, great-grand uncle of co-author Dacre Stoker, wrote Dracula under the shadow of Slains Castle?
Why did Winston Churchill visit the prime minister’s daughter in Slains Castle just before his wedding?
And much more…
Foreword by Alan Hay, Archivist of Clan Hay
