Beatrice Cenci was a 'goddess of beauty', a 'most pure damsel'- and a convicted murderer. The charismatic combination has assured her a place in the pantheon of Romantic heroines, most notably in Shelley's play The Cenci. But who was she, and what really happened? NIcholl, the award-winning biographer and travel writer, author of the The Reckoning, The Fruit Palace, The Creature in the Map andSomebody Else, excavates a four hundred year old mystery or murder and incest in Renaissance Rome. Screaming in the Castle is the title-piece of his new collection of essays and articles, shortly to be published in the US.