The story of a real ‘fairy tale’

It may seem hard to credit nowadays, but photographs of fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley (Yorkshire) garden of two young girls, produced in 1917 as a practical joke, were taken to be genuine by many people – most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In truth, the photographs were the work of Frances Griffiths and her cousin, Elsie Wright, and the…

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