Cornelisz

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    The mind of a psychopath

    ByGreta

    Quite a number of psychopaths have made names for themselves. Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin. Ted Bundy is another, more recent, example, as is Hannibal Lecter, featured in the movie The Silence of the Lambs. What about Jeronimus Cornelisz, erstwhile under merchant on the merchantship Batavia, who for a few short months in 1629,  strode his tiny…

  • Of God and Demons

    ByGreta

    I have always felt that one of the most important aspects of writing historical fiction is getting the mindset right. People in the seventeenth century had different beliefs, different sensitivities to ours. Things like torture, which we find reprehensible, was an accepted means of extracting the truth. Infant mortality was a fact of life; if…

  • Murder by decapitation

    ByGreta

    Have you ever wondered about how easy it is to cut off somebody’s head with one blow of a sword? No, I hadn’t either until I wrote ‘To Die a Dry Death’. It’s one of the most famous of the many murders, often quoted, how with just one blow with a sword, one of the…