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

Falling down in the Orne; a tale of friendship and murder

- October 1, 2025December 20, 2025

First published 2015 Home to Parisian bankers, international golf hotel and Normandy residence of a British criminal who once joined the Queen on the Sunday Times ‘Rich List’. This is possibly the most unnerving postcard match to make the pages of Normandy Then and Now. When we couldn’t find the location

The lost Canadian soldiers of the Ardenne Abbey

Calvados
WW2

- June 7, 2014July 10, 2018

Just outside Caen, surrounded by fields and very quickly surburban housing, is the Abbey Ardenne. We know this because of a postcard we found of a nice old doorway. We matched it late in the spring, not many weeks before an anniversary the Abbey will never forget. The secret garden We parked