Free Republic

The recently completed £1 billion European headquarters of Goldman Sachs in Farringdon Street is situated on the exact footprint of the first medieval Blackfriars monastery. It was built for mendicant Dominican friars in 1224. They moved 50 years later to their main home near today’s Blackfriars station, a few hundred yards down the same street on the opposite side of the River Fleet. The Dominicans established a priory in Holborn, London in 1223, and dedicated the church to Our Lady and St John the Evangelist. In 1276, Edward I gave them permission to move to a site between the River...

A play which was first discovered nearly 300 years ago has been credited to William Shakespeare. The work, titled Double Falsehood, was written by the playwright and another dramatist, John Fletcher. Theatre impresario Lewis Theobald presented the play in the 18th century as an adaptation of a Shakespeare play but it was dismissed as a forgery. But scholars for British Shakespeare publisher, Arden, now believe the Bard wrote large parts of the play. Researchers think the play is based on a long-lost work called Cardenio, which was itself based on Don Quixote. "I think Shakespeare's hand can be discerned in...