Like the short story, Living History, on which the play is based, this is a mystery story. It's both a tale of "Who done it?" and a "Who was the victim?" It opens with a policeman questioning a professor who has found a dead body in another professor's backyard. Like the short story, Henry VIII...

Looking at academics in their ivory tower, ordinary people often find them something between eccentric and deranged. As one who viewed them from the inside, I don't totally disagree with that view. The two short stories you will find here in fact reinforce it. The first involves a professor who...

Why don't writers who fictionalize history just write fiction? Why did Shakespeare call his character Richard III or King John? Why not call him Reginald I or Murray II? If a fiction writer does choose to use a real person's name, does the writer have any obligation to make the fictional...