Facts about shocking south London murders have been laid bare in all their gruesome details in a new book.

Author James Moore’s The Tudor Murder Files brings together the most violent, bloody and mysterious crimes from the 16th century, when your chances of being murdered were five times higher than today.

Tales include how Arnold Crosby murdered Lord Burke in 1591 for ‘pulling his nose’ and How George Brown and Anne Saunders were hanged in Shooter’s Hill in 1573 for the murder of George Saunders.

Moore’s book also reveals how Henry VIII devised a new law so that a poisoner could be boiled alive, the real-life murder that inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and how Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I and Henry VII were all potential murder suspects.

Moore, a national newspaper journalist and author, said: “The Tudor age was one where murder was rife and for the first time pamphleteers and chroniclers fed the public with all the grizzly details of the era’s most gruesome crimes.”

The Tudor Murder Files by James Moore is out now, published by Pen & Sword, for £14.99.

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