Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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if you like greg jenner, the podcast host, the pop historian, the witty nerd - you'll like this book.

One of my favourite reads of 2022. I always love Sue Wallman's books, but this one had everything, and I'm still thinking about it a week later as I write this review. It's tense and suspenseful, with a twist I knew was coming but couldn't quite predict how. I love love loveee when a book gives you so many theories you don't quite know which to believe. Horribly Famous (previously also Dead Famous) is a series of books containing biographies of notable people who are now dead. These books are written by a range of authors and the books are, in some cases ghost-written under the same name as the one person featured in a Dead Famous book. As a spin-off series, Horrible Histories aims to offer an enchanting humour and style of writing that appeals to children so they can be educated and entertained. Whilst previously Horribly Famous and Dead Famous were separate, during the redesigning of the book covers, Dead Famous books became republished using the new Horribly Famous cover design, effectively rendering the Dead Famous series obsolete. Many of the titles were also shortened, such as "Leonardo da Vinci and His Super-brain" to Da Vinci and His Super-brain. I also loved the romance, which was slow and buildable but so so pure, especially compared to other books in the genre which tend to shove in the love story as a bit of an afterthought. Without naming names, *some* high school mysteries see the main character falling for the best-looking guy, the coolest guy, like that whole cliché isn't totally overused and predictable. It was so nice to read a book where you didn't see the romance coming right away, where every character had secrets to hide, even Kate.

What’s the book about?

On TV, he co-hosted BBC2's INSIDE VERSAILLES discussion programme for two series, and was one of the expert panellists on BBC2's THE GREAT HISTORY QUIZ (broadcast on Christmas Eve 2015), joining team captains Lucy Worsley and Dan Snow. Our main character has a seemingly charmed life, and is returning to her exclusive school as house prefect. This brings with it its own challenges, and there is an added sense of unease created by the fact that we know someone is going to die.

Dead Popular is a YA mystery novel that revolves around prestigious boarding school student, Kate Ferreira. The story follows her as mysterious secrets begin to be pinned to a piece of student artwork in the common room, exposing secrets of the other students. When things take a turn for the worst at a party that Kate has arranged, the atmosphere gets serious and Kate fears her secret past will also be exposed. I don't know, I just feel really let down by this book as I was expecting a lot more. I was hoping that Sue Wallman would be a new YA thriller/mystery author whose work I could get into, but I’ll be a bit hesitant to read any of their other works.The 'who cares?' factor is also strong in Dead Famous. I say this as someone who has been addicted to sleb gossip for a lot of my life. Even still, WHO CARES about tortured categorisations of 'famous' vs 'renowned' vs 'celebrity'? When a new house mistress starts, her friend's artwork starts to get misused to reveal secrets about the girls one by one including a secret of Kate's...

Additionally, the author's use of humour throughout the book added a light-hearted and entertaining element. It was a nice way to read about history, and very much replicates Jenner's podcasting style. Elizabeth I and her Terrible Temper (formerly Elizabeth I and Her Conquests) (2001) - Margaret SimpsonCelebrities could be heroes or villains; warriors or murderers; brilliant talents, or fraudsters with a flair for fibbing; trendsetters, wilful provocateurs, or tragic victims marketed as freaks of nature. Some craved fame while others had it forced upon them. A few found fame as small children, some had to wait decades to get their break. But uniting them all is the shared origin point: since the early 1700s, celebrity has been one of the most emphatic driving forces in popular culture; it is a lurid cousin to Ancient Greek ideas of glorious and notorious reputation, and its emergence helped to shape public attitudes to ethics, national identity, religious faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender roles. Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating, and outraging us for much longer than we might realise. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience – the list of stars whose careers burned bright before the Age of Television is extensive and thrillingly varied.

he makes his subject matter accessible, entertaining and enlightening without taking away from its academic accuracy. his research is meticulous, unbiased and you can tell he's done a lot of it in the 4 yours it'd taken him to finish the book. Hamish, an uninteresting doctor; who used a strategy of staying unnoticed in the house to avoid nomination while informing the public that he wanted to have sex on television to discourage them voting him outCelebrity/fame etc is such an interesting topic to read about. From Clara the Rhino (a literal rhino) to Dr Henry Sacheverell a churchman (arguably the first celebrity) to the more obvious celebrity names like Rita Hayworth and Shirley Temple, you’re sure to find an interesting person (and animal, sorry Clara) and discussion on the varieties of fame and what it meant then and how’s that developed. It is a book that touches on a number of interesting themes and contains a setting which I really enjoyed getting to discover. A continually steady pace and the engaging writing also helped to make me feel more invested, but despite a major twist and a dramatic increase in tension towards the end, the plot just seemed a tad convoluted. Darwin and other Seriously Super Scientists (formerly Scientists and their Mind-blowing Experiments) (2003) - Dr Mike Goldsmith