Excellent review of a myth busting biography of Dick Turpin the 18th Century highwayman who according to popular mythology was the epitome of the glamorous and likeable villain, an archetype that stretches from Robin Hood to Butch Cassidy to the fictitious Hannibal Lecter.
How far then is the squalid reality of Armin Miewes, the German cannibal, from the dapper and erudite Lecter. The real Turpin it seems was just as different, an unattractive, unchivalrous and brutal thief who raped and murdered.
“In April 1739 a pock-marked butcher was hanged at York for crimes against His Majesty’s Highways. Richard Turpin’s death was just about the only thing in his shortish life that conformed to anyone’s idea of how a highwayman was supposed to be.”