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
John DuVal John DuVal John Tabb DuVal is an award-winning translator of Old French, Modern French, Italian, Romanesco, and Italian and has been a professor of English and Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas since 1982. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1940, to Thaddeus Ernest DuVal and Helene Dupont Cau, DuVal grew up in Jenkintown, a suburb of Philadelphia. He holds an A.B. in English from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a Master of Arts in English from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master's in French, a Master of Fine Arts in Translation, and a PhD