As with the Troezen/Troizen saga, here we are faced with a Culpeper/Culpepper problem. This is less easy to understand though, as you would think there would be a definitive spelling of the man's name, but as in the case of the many variations of Shakespeare's signature, it seems that in the Tudor era spelling was seen an opportunity for improvisation.

The other connection with the previous article is royal infidelity, but in this case the result is not a heroic epic but tragedy. Culpeper's affair with Catherine Howard led them both to the scaffold, and Henry to his sixth and final wife.

If the stories of Culpeper's earlier casual rape of a park-keeper's daughter and the murder of her would-be rescuer are true then one can have little sympathy for the man. I suspect that his affair with the Queen may have been more to do with ambitious politics than love in any case. Catherine's story, however, is more complex I feel. From the moment she shared her adolescent bed with Francis Dereham it seems both their fates were sealed. Dereham would be hung, drawn and quartered merely for omitting to mention his sexual history with Catherine prior to her marriage to Henry. Her (and his) failure to disclose the prior relationship left her wide open to blackmail.

Soon after becoming Queen a procession of her previous acquaintances appeared on her staff. Even Dereham himself entered the inner circle. In the light of subsequent revelations, it is not difficult to imagine the means by which these positions were gained, but Catherine couldn't silence everyone, and the news of her indiscretions came to the ear of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer.

By this time she was having secret liaisons with Culpeper. The surviving letter from Catherine to Culpeper makes her feelings only too evident, but Culpeper's thoughts remain lost to history.

Interestingly, Catherine was offered a way out to avoid the axe (presumably Henry thought another headless wife would add to his PR woes). She was given the opportunity to recognise her liaisons with Francis Dereham as an act of marriage. If she had done so, the marriage to Henry would be null and void and thus all claims of infidelity would be invalid - unless one counts her infidelities against her new/old husband Dereham. However, Catherine would not renounce her title, and ultimately preferred to die a Queen than live as a commoner.

The first stop on my Wikipedia tour familiarised me straight away with a major difficulty faced by any online search-based encyclopedia, namely alternative spellings. This is a particular problem for words originating from other writing systems. Troizen presented me with a classic example of this difficulty.

The Troizen article, depicting in a very brief fashion a city in ancient Greece, looked ripe for fleshing out - surely there was more relevent information available on this city. Googling the city's name brought up a few articles but not as much as expected. I suspected there was more to this than met the eye. I discovered the problem when I came across a page which mentioned an alternative spelling - Troezen. Searching for this name provided much richer rewards.

The plot thickened when I punched 'Troezen' back into Wikipedia. A separate, slightly more detailed, article appeared on exactly the same subject. Some work was required here to improve the integrity of the encyclopedia.

After searching through some FAQ's I found out what I needed to do. I copied over the text from the Troizen article to the Troezen one, and then put in a redirect tag on "Troizen" so that anyone entering this name would be sent to the master "Troezen" article. All that was then required was a quick integration of the two texts into a new temporary one which would be in place until I could establish whether any further detail would be required. Searching some sources soon indicated that more could certainly be added to good effect.

Although the city, now known as Trizina, exists in modern Greece, its greatest stories are those of myth, of the interwoven fate of men and gods and the heroes which span the chasm between them. Troezen is best known as the birthplace of Theseus, one of the greatest of such heroes. As is common for Greek heroes, he was the offspring of three parents. His mother Aethra had sex with Aegeus, king of Athens, and Poseidon, god of the sea, on the same night. The mix of the seed of a great man and a god created the hero Theseus.

The story of Aegeus leaving his sword and sandals under a huge rock which only Theseus was able to move has perhaps more than just a coincidental resonance with the Arthurian legends of the sword in the stone. In fact, there are a number of such miraculous sword retrieval myths in dark age culture, and it raises the question of whether this particular ancient myth was the root of these traditions.

The story of Hippolytus and Phaedra was not new to me. I saw a terrific performance of Racine's version of the Euripedes play, Phaedra, at London's Old Vic in 1984 with Glenda Jackson playing Phaedra but did not remember the place where it was set. The story again shows the influence of Pegasus upon the events of man, as Theseus invokes his father to kill his (Pegasus's)grandson. The fact that Hippolytus was innocent of the crimes he was accused of shows that Greek gods were far from infallible or omniscient.

Troezen's role in the Battle of Salamis is also intriguing, particularly the recent discovery of the stele depicting the order from Themistocles to evacuate the Athenian women and children to Troezen. The fact that it appears that this was neither original nor a fake, but instead a commemorative plaque created 200 years after the event it describes gives an interesting insight into the civic pride of ancient societies and their need to display this publicly in a similar manner to our modern war memorials and other commemorative monuments.

All anyone needs to know about how Wikipedia works was demonstrated by my own experience upon setting up an account. Doing so gives you your own Wikipedia page which mirrors the format of all the main entries. So you have a home page where you can 'define' yourself, there is a discussion page where people can leave messages or discussion points and an edit page where you can post any changes.

Upon setting up my account, I immediately went to my new home page and scribbled a couple of lines to the effect that the page was under construction. Then I noticed that there was a message on my discussion page. Opening it up I found a welcome note from someone called Sceptre, including some links to useful resources for newbies.

Out of curiosity I went to Sceptre's homepage. This revealed a lot to me about the nature of Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community. Sceptre is a member of the Wikipedia welcoming committee. This is a group of volunteers who take it upon themselves to send welcome messages to new users. This is not an automatic process. Although I found that the message I received was based on a template, Sceptre would still have had to monitor the new user log (people are currently registering at the rate of about 2 per minute!), go to my page and post the message. This effort on Sceptre's part definitely had the presumably desired effect of making me feel at home right from the start of my Wikipedia journey.

I discovered that Sceptre is also a member of the Wikipedia Counter Vandalism Unit. This is a group of people who monitor Wikipedia for instances of deliberate attempts to deface, delete or add misleading information to Wikipedia articles. Although Wikipedia effectively polices itself through the contributions of its users, these volunteers try to catch things quickly and catch the less obvious edits which may be missed by others. How effectively does this address the problem? In 2002 IBM decided to find out. They carried out a study to see how quickly malicious edits are corrected. Amazingly, they found that most were restored to their former glory in less than five minutes.

So I have learnt that Wikipedia has an active community of altruistic volunteers, who actively encourage improvement to the site and work actively to maintain the integrity of its entries. Wikipedia is a triumph of benevolence over malevolence, a testament to what can emerge out of potential anarchy when people put their minds to it. I'm looking forward to setting out on my journey.

As a footnote, I forgot to mention that Sceptre is fourteen years old.

In my previous blogging life, I found myself increasingly using Wikipedia as a valued resource, often shedding unexpected light on subjects I thought I knew something about. I found myself often going off on tangents, completely forgetting my original enquiry. Then I discovered the lure of the 'Random Article' button, through which Wikipedia reveals its true greatness.

Suddenly you find yourself propelled on a journey of discovery, quantum leaping from one unrelated subject to another. Knowing that the text of each article is freely editable by anyone who feels the urge gives the material an added dimension. For example, alighting upon an article about the town of Sweetwater, Florida, nestled among the usual geographical and statistical information was the following statement:

The town founders were primarily Russian Circus midgets. Many of the original homes were miniature scale houses built to accommodate the midgets.

A prankster at work I thought, but checking other sources I found that it was indeed true. Sweetwater was actually colonised by retired Russian circus dwarves who built tiny houses for themselves.

Three thoughts occurred to me in quick succession. The first was that the joy of 'random articling' one's way through the world's knowledge was akin for me to the joy of travel, never knowing what was around the next corner, who one would bump into and what one would discover. The second thought was that it would be great to chronicle the journey I was taking. The third was: wouldn't it be great to enrich this experience by improving Wikipedia along the way through my own research into the subjects I came across? I figure that all I can contribute to Wikipedia is the factual information. My thoughts on what I find will find an outlet here.

So here I am. I've created the blog and I'm ready to depart on my journey. Only one thing left to do: create my Wikipedia account...