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

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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.

There is a reasonably claustrophobic environment created in the school, and many of the characters have something they'd rather others didn't know. There's the usual school rivalry and a mysterious new teacher who seems just a little too intense in her interactions. Inspector Coleridge belongs to an amateur dramatics society that is starting rehearsals for a performance of Macbeth, one of Coleridge's favourite plays. He desperately wishes to play the lead, but the director wants someone younger to play the lead part. Coleridge's success in solving the murder wins him the part. The idea of Banquo's ghost is Coleridge's method of forcing a confession out of the murderer.

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File:Leonardo-da-vinci-his-super-brain.jpg Former cover of Dead Famous book Leonardo da Vinci and His Super-brain File:Da-Vinci-and-His-Super-brain.jpeg Current cover of Horribly Famous book Da Vinci and His Super-brain File:Former horribly famous.jpg Cover of Horribly Famous book Julius Caesar and his Foul Friends, showcasing the former Horribly Famous design Greg is both a passionate defender and careful critic of the way in which the past is exploited for entertainment. He is an Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway, University of London where he teaches on the Public History MA course. He also teaches occasionally at his alma mater, the University of York, where he studied for 4 years before abandoning plans for a PhD to instead go into the TV industry.

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.Jenner aims to define celebrity (and delineate it from fame, acclaim, renown) and discuss its origins, its different types, and explore the phenomenon. Though the latter two of these are explored in a great deal of detail, with plenty of examples and in an intelligent and balanced manner, I thought the author failed to come up with a full and all-encompassing definition of celebrity. The more examples (of what the author considered 'in' and 'out' of this group) given, the more confused I got. The book was flawed because of this, for all that it was full of interesting bits and bobs. Queen Victoria and her Enormous Empire (previously Queen Victoria and her Amusements) (2002) - Alan MacDonald

I ultimately gave up on Dead Famous when it occurred to me to compare it to Joshua Zeitz's Flapper. They're similar in that they're both easy-reads that dart around, spotlighting interesting people. But Flapper is meaty. It feels like more than a sum of its parts. Whereas Dead Famous feels much, much less than a sum of its parts.

The main protagonist is Kate - or Kate Lynette Jordan-Ferreira as she often likes to remind us - and the story begins as she embarks on her fifth year at Mount Norton boarding school, an institution that specialises in the Arts. At the same time, she and her friends have to deal with Ms Calding, their new housemistress who takes a very strict approach to following the rules. It felt like the author was trying to be slightly too intricate and ultimately, the story did not leave as much of an impact as I was hoping for. Even after the ending, which was extremely tense and one of the most gripping parts of the book, the epilogue wrapped things up a little bit too neatly for my liking. 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. Greg Jenner (FRHistS) is a British public historian, broadcaster, and author noted for using humour and pop culture to communicate the complexities of the past. He is the host of the chart-topping BBC comedy podcast YOU'RE DEAD TO ME 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.

greg takes his role as the pop historian laureate very seriously (although this is a book about celebrity prior to 1940s, he quotes lorde among others). Jenner is an engaging tour guide who smuggles some thought-provoking points about our culture into his zippy pen-portraits.” Jenner acts as a kind of Oscar Wilde figure, dispensing wisdom and wit in equal measure, producing a fiendishly enjoyable and thoroughly engaging look at other people’s lives)”

What’s the book about?

Cromwell and his Not-So Civil War (previously Oliver Cromwell and His Warts) (2000) - Alan MacDonald 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...