In his lifetime, long-held religious and moral values, previously considered unquestionable, were being undermined by new scientific discoveries. His poetry began to reflect these issues and question the certainties.

On Robben Island, Mandela was forced to do hard labour, and only allowed one visitor every 6 months.

When you are writing a story or poem, whether for an educational assignment, or to ultimately send to a publisher, you have to try and grip of your reader’s imagination within the first two or three paragraphs.

It was in Medieval Europe that trademarks began to take on a greater importance, when guilds of various traders were formed, each adopting their own distinctive mark or badge.

Shakespeare is also believed to have been the first to use terms such as, ‘green-eyed monster’ and ‘in a pickle’…

Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in London rather than his native Stratford upon Avon, between 1589 and 1613.

Elizabeth was not born with the expectation that one day she would become queen.

Tasked with taking over managing his father’s painting workshop as a child, Raphael soon found that, rather than it being a job beyond his limits, he had a talent that surpassed his parent’s.

Queen Elizabeth was so fond of Sir Walter Raleigh that when he made his courtship and subsequent marriage to one of her maids, Bessy Throckmorton, in 1592, she went into a jealous rage and imprisoned them in the Tower of London.

His novel Ulysses, published in 1922, pioneered Joyce’s use of “stream of consciousnesses” as a literary technique, and set the course for a whole new kind of novel.