Marcel Proust’s ‘A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu’ (translated as In Search of Past) is the world’s longest novel, according to the Guinness World Records. The influential 13-volume work contains 9,609,000 characters, with each letter and space counting as one character.

He was Francois de Montcorbier, known as Villon, born in 1431. His father died when he was quite young and he was brought up by a relative, Guillaume de Villon, whose name he adopted. He was educated at the University of Paris from where he graduated in 1449. He soon fell into bad company and roistered through the seedy taverns …

The titles of the three books are Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal and they were written by Percival Christopher Wren who was born in 1885. Having served in the British, French and Indian armies and having been a member of the French Foreign Legion, he was for a while assistant director of public education in the Bombay Presidency. …

Sugar is a food that people use for energy. Each person in the USA uses, on average, about 41 kg (90 lb) of sugar a year. All plants produce sugar, but the main sources of commercial sugar are sugarcane, a type of grass plant grown in tropical and subtropical regions, and sugar beet, a root crop grown in temperate areas.

It is difficult to pin an exact date for this very popular series of stories because they come from various sources, Indian, Persian and Arabian. Sir Richard Burton, who was responsible for the most popular translation, reckoned that some of the stories Sinbad, for instance dated back over a thousand years.

In his own words “This right hand shall work it all off”. In 1809 he had supplied half the capital of the published, Ballantyne & Co. Although he made a lot of money from his poems and books, he spent much of it on building his home, Abbotsford. In 1826 Ballantyne were in very serious financial difficulties and Scott had …

The names that the famous swordsmen assumed when they joined the French King’s bodyguard of musketeers were Athos, Porthos and Aramis. By these names they are known throughout Alexandre Dumas’ magnificent novel The Three Musketters. It is not until the swashbuckling D’ Artangnan sets out twenty years later, that the true names of them all are revealed. D’ Artangnan, now …

Gulliver’s Travels. Its title was originally The Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Laemuel Gulliver. The book was so well presented with an illustrated portrait of Gulliver and maps, that many credulous people believed it to be a true story. Indeed, a bishop in Ireland angrily asserted that in his opinion it was full of improbable untruths …

Samuel Langhorne Clemens grew up by the Mississippi River, where he was to set his most famous stories- The Adventure of Tam Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For several years he worked as a river pilot, guiding traffic through the treacherous waters. Later, as a journalist and author, he chose to write under a pen name taken from …

Rishyashringa, son of Vibhandaka sage was brought up in wilderness and knew no human beings except his father. The childless king Dasharatha was advised by sage Vasishtha to invite Rishyashringa, known for his spiritual powers to the city of Ayodhya, to perform a special sacrifice for obtaining sons under his supervision. Accordingly teams of dancing girls were sent to the …