QI: The Book of the Dead

Description

The QI Book of the Dead is, in fact, a book about life, and lives: we have selected six dozen of the happiest, saddest, maddest and most successful men and women from history -- the immortally famous and the undeservedly obscure -- to share their secrets, celebrate their wisdom, learn from their mistakes, and marvel at their bad taste in clothes. Hans Christian Anderson was terrified of naked women. Florence Nightingale spent her last fifty years in bed. Sigmund Freud smoked twenty cigars a day. Catherine de Medici applied a daily face mask made of pigeon dung. Rembrandt van Rijn died penniless. And Madame Mao banned cicadas, rustling noises and pianos.

John Lloyd CBE devised The News Quiz and To the Manor Born for radio and Not The Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image and Blackadder for television. John Mitchinson has been both bookseller and publisher and looked after authors as diverse as Haruki Murakami, The Beatles and a woman who knitted with dog hair. Together they are in charge of research for the hit BBC show QI, and have written many bestselling books, including such titles as The Book of General Ignorance, 1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off and most recently, 1,411 QI Facts To Knock You sideways.