It was the spot where Catholics were hanged, drawn and quartered for their faith during the Reformation. So it is appropriate that the Countess of Oxford will argue that William Shakespeare was a man concerned with their plight when she speaks at the convent close to the site of the Tyburn gallows, at what is now Marble Arch in central London. Lady Oxford, also known as Clare Asquith, will deliver the Tyburn Lecture next month, arguing her view that the bard was a covert Catholic who used his plays to communicate with persecuted members of the faith and advise them on how to resist oppression. She first propounded this theory in her 2005 book, Shadowplay: the hidden beliefs and coded politics of William Shakespeare, written after witnessing how theatre was used to subvert censorship in th