Did you know choosing the train over your car can cut your carbon footprint by up to two thirds?

So, one family outing at a time, one little adventurer at a time, one trip to the museum, one dinner in the city, one nap on the way home at a time.

One train journey at a time can help create a greener future.

So when will you take your next trip? Find out more at nationalrail.co.uk slash greener.

Imagine it is the early 1980s and a recent movie that you really liked was Conan the Barbarian.

This was Arnold Schwarzenegger's first big role. That's right, it wasn't the Terminator. That was 1984. It was Conan for 82.

Conan, what is best in life? The crush your enemies? See them driven before you?

They had a lamentation of the women.

Arnold also could barely speak English, but that didn't matter because Conan was cheesy and fun, and it spawned a ton of other imitators.

The sword and the sorcerer. They were the Barbarians.

All these movies and TV shows about loincloth wearing beef cakes, sword wielding indestructible action heroes.

As a kid in the 80s, I love that stuff. In fact, my favorite cartoon at the time was Thundar the Barbarian.

Thundar the Barbarian civilization is cast in ruin.

It never really occurred to me back then to ask where Conan the Barbarian had first come from.

But if you were intellectually curious, you might have gone to your local library or bookstore and found the original Conan stories written by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s.

You might have also found the only biography about Howard at the time, which was called Dark Valley Destiny by El Sprog de Camp.

El Sprog de Camp had been controlling Howard's estate for years.

Although he didn't think Howard was a good writer, and he thought he was a hack, described his writing as Juvenile and careless, and De Camp actually rewrote some of the Conan stories himself.

The real influence that De Camp had on Howard's legacy was this biography, which was actually the culmination of years of writing and research.

See, Howard had committed suicide in 1936, after learning that his mother was terminally ill.

And De Camp really believed that Howard had a massive, edible complex.

He wrote about this a lot, and other media outlets picked up on this theory because it makes for a great story.

...