The Interesting Bits: The History You Might Have Missed - Hardcover

Find out about history's interesting bits from one of the writers of the hit TV quiz QI:

What is bunkum?
Who was the original Nosy Parker?
Which infamous dictator drew the poster for Teddy s Perspiration Powder ?
Was there really a female pope?
Why did Lady Godiva take her clothes off?
Was Good King Wenceslas really good?
Who said of whom, He never commanded more than ten men in his life and he ate three of them ?
Which English king exploded?
Who fought the Dog Tax War?
Did you give your school history lessons your undivided attention?

Even if you did, you re probably none the wiser as to how exactly Henry II of France came to have a two-foot splinter in his head or why Alexandra of Bavaria believed she had swallowed a piano. Or where terms like bunkum, maverick, John Bull and taking the mickey come from; or how the Tsarina of Russia once saved a life with a comma; or why Robert Pate hit Queen Victoria on the head with a walking stick.

For some unknown reason the most interesting bits of history are kept out of lessons and away from syllabuses. Relegated to history s footnotes, they lie buried beneath the dense text like a few golden nuggets in a mountain of granite.

Now The Interesting Bits rights this wrong; it is a veritable treasure trove of those surprising, eccentric, chaotic, baffling asides that don t fit neatly into history s official narrative.

They are history s little-known treasures the gems that generations of teachers have excised from lessons on the grounds that they might make history too much like well fun.