Police e-fit reveals the Bard as a boy

To many people it may look like a mugshot of Daniel Radcliffe before his first audition for the role of Harry Potter. And the man it may depict was certainly a famous thespian in his day. But this is in fact the latest attempt to discover what England's greatest playwright looked like.

Using sophisticated techniques, an artist with the Metropolitan Police claims to have created an image of what the Bard might have looked like as a 14-year-old. The artist, Cathy Charsley, used her training in "age progression" to create the image. Using the police's e-fit computer and comparing portraits of an adult Shakespeare, Ms Charsley reversed the standard techniques she usually uses to mark the ageing process. "I have been trained in age progression, so I worked in reverse, deciding how the face would be different if aged 14, and what features were important," she said.

"Young Will is my interpretation, based on my knowledge of faces and how they change."