Great British Eccentrics

S. D. Tucker

• Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781445647715
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

These islands have long been a stronghold of eccentricity and peculiar behaviour. For whatever reason, eccentricity seems to have been enthusiastically embraced as being one of the defining characteristics of the British people, one of the many things that have become part of our national identity. Is it our status as an island people, set apart from the rest of the world, that has made so many of our countrymen turn in on themselves and go a little strange? Has our long libertarian tradition of the idea of the freedom of individuals to live their own lives as they please, just so long as they do no harm to anybody else, allowed weirdness to flourish within our land? Or is there just something dodgy in the water? There are probably plenty of reasons, but one thing is for certain: historically, this country has produced some of the strangest people who have ever lived, and in this book Steven Tucker compiles the details of both some of the most well-known and the most obscure oddballs ever to have been eligible to hold a British passport. From the psychiatrist who acclaimed lobsters as being capable of love, to the mermaid-impersonating vicar who invented the Harvest Festival, to the mad aristocrat who invented a tiny gun for shooting wasps, this wild ride through our history's most colourful characters will both amuse and entertain.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Introduction: In an Orbit of Their Own
• Aberrant Aristocrats: Upper-Class Eccentrics
• The Strangest Family in England: The Sitwells
• House of Uncommons: Political Eccentrics
• One Lord A-Looning: John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell (1921–1987)
• A Man of Firm Opinion: Colonel Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp, MP (1783–1855)
• That New Black Magic: Occult Eccentrics
• Meek, Not Mild: Joe Meek (1929–1967)
• On Another Planet: Desmond Leslie (1921–2001)
• Loonies of Letters: Literary and Artistic Eccentrics
• Not the Bookish Type: Arthur Cravan (1881–1918)
• The Great Offender: Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
• Barmy Army: Military Eccentrics
• Grandad’s Army: General Sir Walter Walker (1912–2001)
• Mr Freeze: Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke (1893–1948)
• The Human Zoo: Zoological Eccentrics
• A Most Unnatural History: Charles Waterton (1782–1865)
• Conclusion: Britons Ever, Ever, Ever Shall Be Strange
• The Last Englishman: Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Daniel Wintle, MC (1897–1966)
• Notes and References
• Bibliography