Alison Chisholm
It all started when rain stopped play. Mary Godwin and her lover (and later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley were visiting the poet Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was appalling, so the company decided to amuse themselves by reading some German ghost stories in translation. This led to a challenge to see who could write the best ghost story… and eventually Mary came up with the tale that would be guaranteed to freeze the marrow of generations of readers.