The story headlined “Castle the latest to lay claim to Dracula tale” – as if there have been many such claims.

And why wheel out the parrot-squawk opinions of Dorothy Clegg, or Leslie Brown, or, most totally ignorant of a very ignorant trio, Graham Taylor?

If it’s about fishing ask a fisherman.

If it is about medicine ask a doctor.

If it is about literature, scholarship or culture, ask a cultured scholar.

The Irishman Bram Stoker was transfixed by the stage, but merely dabbled in literature.

He wrote what we would call thrillers.

Only one was a success.

He in fact spent his life as the manager of the greatest Victorian actor of his time, Sir Henry Irving.

Stoker was an assiduous diarist and prolific letter writer.

In 1968 the biography of Bram Stoker was published.

The author had complete access to Stoker’s diaries and correspondence.

These were lent to him by Stoker’s only son Noel.

Cruden Bay was Stoker’s favourite place.

It was where he wanted to die.

The evidence is incontrovertible.

Stoker had been reading Polidori’s gothic novel The Vampyre.

Stoker conceived his novel and its plot while holidaying at Cruden Bay and based the count’s castle on Slains Castle.

All this is mentioned in diaries and letters, so we know the dates.

He then set one of the scenes of his novel in Whitby, a place he had often visited with Sir Henry Irving.

Incidentally, the ‘cult of Gothery’ as we know it started not 100 years ago, but in 1986ish.

So all you professional Whitby-ites grow up.

And if you don’t know what you are talking about, shut up.

Patrick Edward Maclaren Hargan,

Esk Terrace, Whitby