A war hero, a mass murderer and a Gothic legend the world has never forgotten

Vlad the Impaler is one of history's most compelling and brutal characters, with a bizarre afterlife as a cult horror sensation. A hero to his countrymen, Vlad Dracula is a byword for dread. Not just for generations of Western fans of Gothic fiction and film, but also for an appalled and fascinated 15th-century readership, for whom contemporary accounts of Dracula's atrocities became the world's first horror bestsellers.

Combining historical research and dramatic reconstruction with contemporary reference, here is Vlad the Impaler's dramatic career, from pampered captive of the Ottoman Sultans to exterminating angel of Christian vengeance. But in reality, was he the embodiment of unbridled cruelty or model ruler of an embattled realm?

Prince Dracula also examines the role of psychological warfare and black propaganda in international politics, from the medieval torture chamber to the headlines of the modern age, and shows Vlad as an unwitting pioneer of the modern world.

Plying a grisly course through medieval bloodbaths and contemporary horrors, Gavin Baddeley and Paul Woods leave no tombstone unturned in this extraordinary history.