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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
David Barnett

What was Dracula really like? 550-year-old clue to life of Vlad the Impaler emerges

A 16th-century portrait of Vlad III, more commonly known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula
A 16th-century portrait of Vlad III, more commonly known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula. Photograph: Ian Dagnall Computing/Alamy

On a dark and stormy night in May this year, exactly 125 years to the day that Bram Stoker published the definitive vampire novel, two people pored over a document more than 500 years old in a room in Transylvania – signed by Dracula himself.

Gleb and Svetlana Zilberstein’s mission? To extract genetic material from the letters written by Vlad Dracula – the historical inspiration for Stoker’s vampiric count – left there by his sweat, fingerprints and saliva.

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