The mild mannered murderer, from Alençon

Mystery
Orne

- July 28, 2026August 13, 2026

First published November 2015 Murderer and fraud Edme Samuel Castaing was born in 1789, during the turbulent years of the French Revolution but in Alençon, a prosperous country town that experienced little in the way of revolutionary disorder. Edme’s childhood was relatively undisturbed. His family was comfortably bourgeois and as far as

A Walk through old Alençon in 1923 – woodcuts picture post!

- June 21, 2025August 27, 2026

A decision in 1848 to send the main Paris train line through Le Mans not Alençon may have been bad for the city's economy, but also left it's grand old streets untouched by progress. Then in 1944 Alençon was fortunate to be liberated with considerably less bombing than other areas of

Harlette, or was that harlot? Of Falaise

- July 18, 2015September 24, 2016

Harlette, daughter of Fulbert the Tanner, changed the course of history for ever when she raised her skirts a little higher than necessary in the courtyard of Gilbert Count of Brionne, one of the most powerful landowners in Normandy. Ambitions of a medieval lady Her charms were noticed and she was summoned