Stafford boasts a long and eventful history and has more than its fair share of secrets locked away among its ancient streets and beneath the 11th-century Norman castle. The town suffered brutal suppression during the Norman Conquest and also played its part in the English Civil War. The pottery production for which the county has long been famous had its foundations in Stafford but by the 18th century, the potteries in Stafford were overshadowed by the more important shoe manufacturing industry, a time when the town was represented in parliament by the famous playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The county town of Staffordshire has many secrets just waiting to be discovered and in Secret Stafford , local author and historian Robert Nicholls pulls back the curtains of history to peer into the distant and not so distant past to reveal the forgotten, the strange and the unlikely.