Search results for ""Author Karl Shaw""

The First Showman is a hugely entertaining history of the man who created the modern circus: Philip Astley. There have been many books about aspects of the circus but little written about its inventor. Here, New York Times bestselling author Karl Shaw draws on original research to tell the story of Britain’s Barnum. He brilliantly evokes the time, the place, the drama, pitfalls, successes, characters and passion behind Astley’s rise to fame. Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, ‘Mr Astley’ is also a local hero for the author, who now lives there. Astley served as a sergeant major in the British Army where he learned his horse-riding skills, before becoming a brilliant innovator of equestrian tricks and spectacles. In April 1768 Astley staked out a ring at Halfpenny Hatch near Waterloo in London and he and his wife Patty put on displays of trick horse-riding in the open air. Two years later, he put a clown in the ring and gave birth to the modern circus. His circus performers included a strongman called Signor Colpi and a clown called Mr Merryman. He established the still-standard diameter of the circus ring, 42 feet. He was invited to perform before European royalty and built France’s first purpose-built circus building, the Amphitheatre Anglais, in Paris. Almost incredibly, he built circuses in twenty European cities. At home, Astley’s Amphitheatre was mentioned in books by Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. He died on 20 October 1814 and was buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. His life is a wonderful story of perseverance and flair on the way to achieving everlasting renown.

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Which king lost the crown jewels? Which queen was as wide as she was tall? And who was the king who died with a poker up his bum?A humorous take on British kings and queens through the ages. Packed with facts and information - focusing on all the funny bits!

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The alarming history of the British, and European, aristocracy - from Argyll to Wellington and from Byron to Tolstoy, stories of madness, murder, misery, greed and profligacy.From Regency playhouses, to which young noblemen would go simply in order to insult someone to provoke a duel that might further their reputation, to the fashionable gambling clubs or 'hells' which were springing up around St James's in the mid-eighteenth century, the often bizarre doings of aristocrats. An eighteenth-century English gentleman was required to have what was known as 'bottom', a shipping metaphor that referred to stability. Taking part in a duel was a bold statement that you had bottom. William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne certainly had bottom, if not a complete set of gonads following his duel with Colonel Fullarton, MP for Plympton. Both men missed with their first shots, but the colonel fired again and shot off Shelborne's right testicle. Despite being hit, Shelborne deliberately discharged his second shot in the air. When asked how he was, the injured Earl coolly observed his wound and said, 'I don't think Lady Shelborne will be the worse for it.' The cast of characters includes imperious, hard-drinking and highly volatile Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who is remembered today as much for his brilliant scientific career as his talent for getting involved in bizarre mishaps, such as his death as a result of his burst bladder; the Marquess of Queensberry, a side-whiskered psychopath, who, on a luxury steamboat in Brazil, in a row with a fellow passenger over the difference between emus and ostriches, and knocked him out cold; and Thomas, 2nd Baron Lyttelton, a Georgian rake straight out of central casting, who ran up enormous gambling debts, fought duels, frequented brothels and succumbed to drug and alcohol addiction.Often, such rakes would be swiftly packed off on a Grand Tour in the hope that travel would bring about maturity. It seldom did.

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'A riveting read ... a dark story of murder and deceit with verve and insight' John Woolf, author of The Wonders THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A 19TH-CENTURY CIRCUS LEGENDOn 28 November 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.

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