Richard Turpin was an English highwayman in the early 1700s who ran with gangs of deer thieves, poachers, burglars and horse thieves before his capture. After moving to Yorkshire under a false name, he was jailed in York Castle on suspicion of horse theft, and his true identity came out through a letter he wrote from his cell to his brother-in-law. He was found guilty in March 1739 and hanged at Knavesmire, outside York, that April. Within decades of his death he had become a romantic hero in ballads and theatre, and the famous 200-mile overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess was a fiction, made famous by the Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth almost a century later.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.