Deathinitions

Ever wondered how the fearsome Blackbeard met his grisly end? Come aboard from some grog and I'll tell ye a tale that beggars belief about the last stand of a man with three pistols and a beard alight with the fires of hell...

In part two of the deathly delve into excruciating executions it's time to look at some of the worst that history has to offer and the pour souls who suffered from those terrible fates.

From Ash's comically murderous hand in the Evil Dead Franchise to A24's dread-filled terrifier Talk To Me, severed hands are still clutching at our collective consciousness. But where does this fascination that our divorced limbs have a life of their own come from? And why on Earth would people actively seek out the cold touch of a freshly hanged criminal?

Today we're rolling out the ropey history in part 1 of looking at the history of public execution in all its morbid and gory details.

Welcome to the Daft Demise of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, middle child and possibly the only man in history to have requested that he be drowned in a barrel of wine.

In last weeks episode of Deathinitions we talked about the mystery of the Highgate Vampire. Whether you believe in blood sucking fiends or not is up to you but we can agree on is that Highgate contains a staggeringly high number of rotten remains - not all of them were good people. And some were just very unlucky. So today we're going to meet some of the cemetery's own mad, bad, (often just sad) and dangerous to know.

This week we're takinga trip to Highgate Cemetery in London where shadows stalk and vampires and satanists may be just around the corner...

On this weeks Morbid Morsel - the shorter weekly episodes where I tell you about bizarre snippets from history and fun and grizzly stories and facts that didn't make it into last weeks episode - we delve into the mysterious case of one of literature's strangest demises.