A Pin to See the Peepshow - by F Tennyson Jesse isn't really crime fiction as it is based on a real life murder case - that of Edith Chapman and Freddie Bywaters (Frieda - are you there?). A wonderful thing happened in that one of my lit group knows Rene Weis who wrote 'Criminal Justice' a resource of research, compassion, and superb writing about this case - and Rene came to talk to us on Thursday last- not about his book but about 'Antony and Cleopatra' our Shakespeare text for the year.

I though you all might be interested because the location of the crime - Ilford - is very local to me - AND Rene an extraordinarily delightful man is,, among his many other projects, trying to get a posthumous pardon for Edith.

I have finally ditched aol and now reside at jankinrade@hotmail.com

René Weis, BA, PhD

Professor of English and Convenor of the Shakespeare in History MA

Research interests: René Weis's main area of research is the life and work of Shakespeare. He also teaches on the Renaissance course and lectures on Marlowe and Webster. Among his other interests are the Classical Background of English Literature, particularly Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, and Ovid, and modern drama from Ibsen and Chekhov to Miller, Williams, Pinter, and Mamet.

Current research: He is preparing a new edition of Romeo and Juliet for The Arden Shakespeare Third Series.

Publications

His new biography of Shakespeare, Shakespeare Revealed: A Biography, appeared from John Murray (London) in March 2007 and will be published in October 2007 by Henry Holt & Co (New York) under the title Shakespeare Unbound: Decoding a Hidden Life. His other publications include a new introduction to the New Penguin Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra (2005), editions of King Lear (Longman 1993), Henry IV Part 2 (Clarendon OUP 1998), and the plays of John Webster (OUP 1996) as well as The Yellow Cross, which was published by Viking in 2000. In 2001 it was brought out by Penguin and then, in New York, by Knopf and Vintage. It has since been published by Fayard (France), Luebbe and Bastei (Germany), Mondadori (Italy), Debate (Spain), Het Spectrum (Holland), with translations in Greek and in Portuguese due out in 2007. René WeisÂs book on Edith Thompson, Criminal Justice: TheTrue Story of Edith Thompson, was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1988 and by Penguin in 1990; a revised version with a new introduction appeared in 2001.

Weis has over the years successfully seen through to completion a number of PhD students in the field of Shakespeare studies and is keen to supervise further research on any aspect of Shakespeare, and particularly in the areas of editing, bibliography, biography, topography, local history, translations, and the sectarian divides in ShakespeareÂs England and their relevance to his works.