The Not-So-Nude Ride of Lady Godiva: & Other Morsels of Misinformation from the History Books

The Not-So-Nude Ride of Lady Godiva is the latest instalment in David Haviland’s fascinating and hilarious series of trivia books. Previous titles have included Self-Harming Parrots and Exploding Toads, which looked at the oddities of the animal kingdom, and Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar, which is a collection of entertaining stories about medicine and health. Like the previous titles, The Not-So-Nude Ride of Lady Godiva will use the popular ‘notes and queries’ format, as it addresses a series of bizarre and obscure questions.

This time, the focus is on history, as The Not-So-Nude Ride of Lady Godiva explores the entire history of human civilisation, from the Trojan Wars all the way up to the first Iraq War. Along the way we will encounter Julius Caesar, Lady Godiva, Captain Bligh, and the first and only Emperor of the United States of America. We will demolish a range of myths, as we learn that the Great Wall of China is not really a wall, the first world war took place in the 18th century, Queen Victoria was surprisingly saucy, and England was successfully invaded by a foreign power far more recently than you might have thought. Other questions include:

  • What was the most disastrous kidnapping in history?
  • Why didn’t the Vikings settle in North America?
  • Who was the rightful king of England when William the Conqueror invaded in 1066?
  • Why did Henry II submit to being whipped by monks in 1174?
  • In medieval times, why would spiral staircases usually wind clockwise?
  • Was Edward II killed as a result of a misplaced comma?
  • Which queen gave birth in front of 200 people?
  • What went wrong on Easter Island?
  • When was Britain’s Royal Navy used to protect the drugs trade?
  • Which leader held a state funeral for his own leg?
  • Which is the more effective weapon: a bayonet, or a machine gun?
  • Why are the British royal family called ‘Windsor’?
  • Why did the US Ambassador to Iraq tell Saddam Hussein that America would have no objection to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait?

Book Author

David-haviland David Haviland is a writer, editor, and ghostwriter, with a number of bestselling books to his name, which have been sold to publishers all over the world, and widely serialised. David has collaborated with Francesca Gould on a number of amusing trivia books, including Why Is Yawning Contagious? (Piatus, 2007), Horny Lizards and Headless Chickens (Piatkus, 2009), and Self-Harming Parrots and Exploding Toads (Little, Brown, 2010). David’s next book is a collection of medical trivia, called Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar…, which will be published by Penguin in December...
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