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In spring 1460, wrote a contemporary, 'untold abuses, damage hardly reparable, sad murders, multilations, sorrows' were visited upon the city of Brasov, by 'the unfaithful cruel tyrant Dracula, who calls himself Vlad, prince ... He did this following the teaching of the Devil.' According to legend, he impaled his victims, then sat at table mopping up their blood from his plate; later he hung the still live bodies of opposing forces on a field of stakes. So began the history of Vlad the Impaler. But were his actions the righteous defence of a kingdom, an act of vengeance for the cruel deaths of his father and brother? Or the unspeakable fury of a madman with a taste for blood?
In his new book, crime writer and historian M.J. Trow peels back the layers of myth and history to reveal the real man whose name gave birth to a legend. He explores the terror with which the character was once associated, going backwards in time from the celluloid Count of Hammer and Universal Studios to the literary creations of Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu and John Polidori. Before that, the folklore of Europe, from Ireland to Russia, carries terrifying tales of bloodsucking ghouls hovering in churchyards,' the 'dead undead' or revenants who slept in their coffins by day and terrorized remote villages by night.
A century and a half before Stoker wrote Dracula, vampire outbreaks hit a bewildered Europe, centring inexorably on Transylvania, the 'land beyond the forest', the undead's natural home. Beyond the forests, in the 'horseshoe of the Carpathians', once lived the original of Stoker's terrible and immortal Count.
book reviews
- The Good Book Guide
Using his background as a crime novelist, Trow peels back the layers of myth to offer a thrilling read. - Hartlepool Star
...a pulsating page-turner, not only examines the life of this colourful character it also considers the way in which the whole vampire myth - from Bram Stoker to Anne Rice - has developed over the years. But the main thrust of the book follows the fortunes of Vlad Ihe Impaler - a tale that is as exciting and dramatic as any Hollywood script. A wonderful read, making it a book you'll really want to sink your teeth into!
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