The Mysterious Case of the Haberdasher's Scissors

In this fun illustrated talk, local writers and researchers, Alison Habens and Matt Wingett claim to have discovered an extraordinary fact: three famous literary figures of the 19th Century, H.G.Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling met each other in the early 1880s, in the old Drapery Bazaar, Hide's Emporium, on King's Road in Southsea.

Even more amazing, they were involved in a dark mystery that might have come straight from one of their own stories. Hear it unfolds, through a series of extracts from their autobiographies, solve a few clues yourself - and work out where the boundary between true history and pure invention sits...

Is truth stranger than fiction? Or does it get in the way of a good yarn? You decide!