Claude Duval legend, including claims of alchemy, gambling, and much womanising. He is reported to haunt the Holt Hotel along the A4260 (Oxford Road) in Oxfordshire, a hotel where he spent many nights when it was a small coaching inn. Recent historians have reappraised the legacy of Duval. James Sharpe in "Dick Turpin" regarded Duval as the most significant figure in the shaping of the highwayman myth. John and Philip Sugden's "The Thief of Hearts" reconstructs what is known of the historical Duval, using much fresh evidence, and shows that the traditions about the Frenchman were used by such literary luminaries as
Claude B. Duval Claude B. Duval Claude Berwick Duval, I (October 24, 1914 – March 3, 1986), was an attorney from his native Houma, Louisiana, and a Conservative Democrat state senator from Terrebonne and St. Mary parishes, having served from 1968 to 1980. He is best known for his profound oratory, his accommodation of Senate colleagues, his unsuccessful 1963-1964 campaign for lieutenant governor, and his opposition to the national holiday honoring civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. Duval was born to Stanwood Duval (1868–1928), and the former Mamie Richardson. Claude Duval and his older brother, Stanwood Richardson Duval, Sr., attended the United