Books by Karl Shaw

"The life and death of a 19th-century circus legend. On November 28, 1911 a retired showman died violently at his home in North London. Known to the world as Lord George Sanger, he was once the biggest name in show business, and was venerated as a national institution. The death of Britain's wealthiest showman read like a popular crime thriller: a merciless killer; a famous victim; sensational media headlines; a desperate manhunt laced with police incompetencies and a dramatic denouement few could have anticipated. But for over a century, questions have persisted about the murder. Weaving in the story of George's rise to fame and the history of Britain's entertainment industry, The Killing of Lord George uses previously unpublished archive material to reconstruct the events leading up to the death and reveal the true story behind the brutal crime that shocked Edwardian England." --

'The English aristocrat John 'Mad Jack' Mytton died a bloated, paralysed and penniless debtor in prison. His premature demise was partly due to injuries sustained while setting fire to his own night-shirt to try to cure hiccups. Just before the horribly burned Mytton slumped into unconsciousness he said, "e;Well, the hiccups is gone, by God."e;' An 18th-century French scholar attributed the British talent for eccentricity to a 'mixture of fogs, beef and beer...aggravated by the tedium of the English Sunday'. Whatever the reason, the British Isles do seem to have thrown up more than their fair share of magnificent oddballs, the finest of which are profiled in this fast, funny celebration of over 200 aristocrats, inventors, artists and the just plain weird... * Dr Samuel Johnson is said to have shaved off all of his bodily hair, just to see how long it would take to grow back * Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, once related an experience he had at Westminster: 'I had a horrid nightmare. I dreamed I was making a speech in the House of Lords, and woke up to find I actually was.' * Percy Bysshe Shelley once tied a cat to a kite in a thunder storm to see if it would be electrocuted

Strange... Astonishing... Fascinating... an extraordinary collection of weird and wonderful facts and tales from around the world.

A humorous take on British kings and queens through the ages. Packed with facts and information - focusing on all the funny bits.