He has to cheat a bit to engineer this result: neither Thomas Cranmer nor Thomas Wriothesley died in the reign of Henry VIII, and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, although condemned, was miraculously reprieved.

ECONOMIST: Tudor history

The study was a collaboration with Prof Richard Marggraf Turley of the English and creative writing department and Prof Howard Thomas from the Institute for Biological and Environmental Studies (Ibers).

BBC: William Shakespeare

"Not only did we have a legal right to fund the research, we had an obligation, " says Thomas Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

FORBES: Anti-Ban Billionaires