Karl Shaw

This book was a Christmas present and provided a few hours of solid entertainment. It is a compendium of anecdotes about British eccentrics of 17th to 20th centuries, with a particular focus on politicians and scientific pioneers of the 19th who seem to have been an especially peculiar bunch. Unsurprisingly, some 95% of them are male. Whilst men who behave weirdly have long been allowed their eccentricities, women who do the same are generally institutionalised. The author also acknowledges show more a class difference: if you’re aristocratic you’re eccentric; if you’re poor you’re just mentally ill. Serious social points aside, I found the book incredibly funny and repeatedly read anecdotes aloud to whoever in the house happened to be listening. An example, concerning a Victorian Poet Laureate:

When it was pointed out to him that his poems were full of basic grammatical errors, Austin replied, “I dare not alter these things. They come to me from above.” Austin complained to Lord Young that he was always broke, but added, “I manage to keep the wolf from the door.”

“How?” Young enquired, “By reading your poems to him?”

Sick burn. Other highlights include Charles Babbage’s long-running feud with organ grinders, William Gladstone’s extraordinary dull conversation, and Aleister Crowley’s judgement that L. Ron Hubbard was ‘an idiot’. Although some of the characters featured appear to merely be tiresome bigots, the majority are amusing nonsense-mongers. An ideal book for the Christmas holidays. show less

That many members of royalty over the years are mad as cut snakes should be of no surprise to us. Karl Shaw takes us on a journey of mostly European royalty and their eccentricities/stark raving looniness. Often entertaining and you can’t help but feel sorry for poor Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. He built the famous Neuschwanstein Castle which was seen at the time by many as a symptom of madness, and possibly murdered. Now the castle is one of the most visited tourist sites in the world and show more brings in large amounts of dosh for the local area. Perhaps he should be known as King Ludwig the visionary. show less

What a wonderful little guide this is. 186 pages detailing the grossest and most bizarre things you could imagine is what a book should be all about.

To know that British PM Pitt the Younger was such an alcoholic that he would regularly slip behind the Speaker's Chair in parliament to quietly vomit adds to my understanding of the man (and what might still be behind the Speaker's Chair). To know that in Ancient Egypt there was a job with the title "Shepherd of the Royal Anus", which, as one show more could guess, went to the chap administering enemas to the Pharaohs.

Besides the odd, there's the downright horrific, with tales abounding of lovable rogues like Idi Amin, Ivan the Terrible, Mahomet III and various Shahs. I won't recite them here but suffice to say you need a stiff drink one you've read a few. show less

Until I read “5 People Who Died During Sex: and 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists” I did not know that Elizabethans relieved toothache by applying sweat from the anus of a cat that had been chased across a ploughed field. Nor did I know that Lorne Greene (the bloke from “Bonanza”) had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator. And similarly I was completely in the dark about the fact that anyone in the ancient civilisation of Manu who farted in front of the monarch would have show more their anus amputated.

While I was very happy to learn of these vital facts, I couldn’t help but notice this book seemed thrown together, with segments originally from other Shaw books. My Kindle version was also missing some pages, which does tend to annoy somewhat. However, whenever I started to get peeved about issues like this, I read that King Ferdinand I of Naples described his new wife Queen Caroline thus: “She leeps like the dead and sweats like a pig” or that Elijah Upjohn, the man who hanged Ned Kelly, was once arrested for unnatural practices with a chicken, and forgive Shaw for everything. show less