Locked in the Tower

WITH more than 1,000 years of history it has been a fortress, a Royal palace and home to the Crown Jewels. But the Tower of London has also been a forbidding prison, with Nazi spies and gangsters among the 8,000 people to have been locked up behind its walls. Now a new series of the hit Channel 5 show Inside The Tower will examine what happened to the head of one its captives, Sir Walter Raleigh. Here JAMES MOORE looks at his story - and other tales of the building's intriguing inmates...

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WITH more than 1,000 years of history it has been a fortress, a Royal palace and home to the Crown Jewels.

But the Tower of London has also been a forbidding prison, with Nazi spies and gangsters among the 8,000 people to have been locked up behind its walls.

Now a new series of the hit Channel 5 show Inside The Tower will examine what happened to the head of one its captives, Sir Walter Raleigh.

Here JAMES MOORE looks at his story - and other tales of the building's intriguing inmates...

VAT'S NASTY...

DURING the Wars of the Roses, the Duke of Clarence was thrown in the Tower by his elder brother, Edward IV.

After a trial conducted by the king himself, the duke was sentenced to death.

This was carried out on February 18, 1478, in the Bowyer Tower, when he was reputedly drowned headfirst inside a barrel of his favourite Malmsey wine.

MURDERED KINGS...

Edward V and his younger brother Richard became known as the Princes in the Tower after disappearing there in 1483, probably murdered on the orders of their uncle Richard III. More than a decade earlier, in 1471, Henry VI died in prison at the Tower after being deposed by Edward IV. He's thought to have been murdered with a dagger while praying. Chief suspect - yep, the future Richard III.

TRAGIC QUEENS...

Henry VIII's second wife and queen, Anne Boleyn, below, was imprisoned at the Tower, then beheaded and buried there in 1536.