Hello! If you’ve read my book, DEAD FAMOUS: AN UNEXPECTED HISTORY OF CELEBRITY FROM BRONZE AGE TO SILVER SCREEN, and you want to know what I read during my research, below are three different lists of references. If you’ve listened on audiobook, and you want to know the footnotes, I’ve included them too PART 1:…
Read more...I’ve just made a 3 hour BBC Radio 4 Extra documentary called Hilarious Histories: What’s So Funny About The Past? about how comedy writers have used history as source material. It’s a fun programme which you can hear on BBC Sounds here But to promote the programme, I also wrote this short blog about my…
Read more...Hi! I saw BBC sports journalist Dan Walker tweet this lovely joke about the Great British Bake Off this morning, and it instantly got me thinking. In terms of very expensive tents, history is full of them – Genghis Khan had one, and so did King Xerxes of Persia (it was captured by the enemy,…
Read more...Hello, you look nice today. Have you done something new with your hair? No, seriously, it really suits you. Anyway, the reason you’re here is hopefully because you enjoyed my book and perhaps want to know more about some of the things I mentioned? I really hope that’s the case, because that’s the raison d’etre for my entire…
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From our lofty vantage point in the 21st century, everything preceding our own era looks ridiculous: the weird beliefs, the stupid clothes, the primitive technology. But what we fail to realise is that every society since the dawn of time has considered itself the pinnacle of human achievement; Chaucer didn’t saunter around saying: “we’re in…
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