Empty car parks, unlit alleyways and deserted graveyards are among architectural situations which have been examined by artists for a new exhibition about the power of buildings to intimidate and unsettle.

A maul is a kind of mallet, which was used to club a family to death (baby included) in London's East End in December 1811. The country was plunged into a frenzy of fear. Twelve nights later, an elderly couple and their maid were found bludgeoned to death. Public opinion demanded a culprit, and an Irish seaman named John Williams, who lodged at the nearby Pear Tree inn, was arrested. With the trial still ongoing, Williams was found hanged in his cell, and posthumously convicted.

In 1180, a monk named Richard Devizes wrote of how he disliked London, a city filled with "jesters, smooth-skinned lads, Moors, flatterers, pretty boys, effeminates, pederasts, singing and dancing girls, quacks, belly-dancers, sorceresses, extortioners, night-wanderers, magicians, mimes, beggars, [and] buffoons." He concluded, "if you do not want to dwell with evil-doers, do not live in London."

Weill & Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins and Alban Berg's Lulu share a fascination with the decay and degradation of the human spirit in a decadent age.

The life story of Jack Unterweger – an Austrian serial killer who strangled prostitutes with their bras and became a cause célèbre after writing poetry in prison – has been compared to those of Josef Fritzl and Jack the Ripper.

Before the first Twilight movie in 2008, I was a much more open person. Now I spend a lot of time looking at the floor in public in an attempt not to get noticed. It can get a little boring. But whatever sacrifices I've had to make as a rising star, my job makes up for it a hundredfold.

Fashion isn't usually a matter of life and death. People who work in fashion take it incredibly seriously, but you have to be a stylist or a fashion editor to care passionately about the cut of a pair of trousers. So I wouldn't be surprised if many people were baffled last week when they heard fashion industry insiders responding to news of the death of the British designer, Alexander McQueen. Even making allowances for the fact that some of the interviewees knew him personally and were speaking while the shock of his death was still raw, they struggled for a language which would make sense to ordinary human beings; if you weren't acquainted with McQueen's work, you might come away with the idea that he put men in bottom-exposing "bumster" trousers – or that he was a wayward genius.

Whether you live in a Georgian townhouse, a rambling country pile or a simple city flat, your home may tell a fascinating story. Holly Williams plays domestic detective

Pinning down the identity of Britain’s most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper, has occupied the minds of historians and conspiracy theorists alike for decades. Over the years, enthusiasts have pored over the evidence to draw up a list of potential killers that range from the plausible to the preposterous.

It sounded strange but harmless: a group of men and women who believed that they had lived before as kings and queens. But was it more sinister than that? Read this short story by Margaret Atwood, and Tudor history will never seem the same again

Joe Meek is often lazily dubbed "the English Phil Spector"; but despite the shared characteristics of their personal lives (independent spirit, short temper, paranoid psychosis, doomed recourse to gunplay), in the arena which defined their existences – music – they were poles apart.

On the tenth anniversary of Buffy The Vampire Slayer hitting British screens Julian Hall talks to its creator Joss Whedon about the show’s Englishness and its resonance from beyond the grave

People put off by expensive foreign travel can find plenty of outstanding attractions at home this Easter.

The black magician who created the graphic anti-heroes is 'spitting venom' from afar over the new film writes <b>Andrew Johnson</b>.