Vlad el empalador

the long version

The Count Dracula of legend is revealed to be based on a 15th century Romanian warlord called Vlad Tepes who favoured fearsome night attacks on the Turks and torturing his captors by driving stakes through their bodies in this grimly fascinating piece of historical detective work. If there is such a beast as a 'Draculanorak', then this is the book they've been waiting for. Among fascinating snippets unearthed are the fact that Christopher Lee wore red contact lenses for those blood-red eyeballs in the Hammer films, and the former dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu once said smugly to his health visitor: "A man like me comes along only once every five hundred years".