ADVENTURES FROM HISTORY

Horatio Nelson loses his eye, arm and life, respectively. He did his duty, as expected.

ADVENTURES FROM HISTORY

A baby Oliver Cromwell is kidnapped by his Grandfather's pet monkey.

OLD AND MYSTERIOUS

Here’s a book by the late Alan Landsburg from the Alan Landsburg Wing of what we are now calling The Alan Landsburg Memorial Library. It’s a fascinating read, and the writing of it (as part of the ‘In Search Of…’ TV show) took him all over the world, which is nice. As Alan writes in the introduction -

The passage is worth posting in order to illustrate two of Alan’s greatest qualities: his enthusiasm, and his imagination.

THE TERRIFYING AND UNKNOWABLE FACES OF PREHISTORY

Number Four:

A terracotta portrait of the god Turms

(Etruria) circa 500 BC

ADVENTURES FROM HISTORY

King Harold gets an eyeful. 

TENUOUS TIE IN

Glowering Swiss hunk and 'handsome bastard' Oliver Tobias shot to fame in Harlech Television's 'Arthur Of The Britons', so much so that a publicity shot from the series was subsequently featured on the cover of the 1972 edition of K.K Downing's well received book on the Saxon and Norman monarchy. 

Not much is really known about the 'actual' King Arthur, of course, so Downing simply wrote a chapter summarising the first twelve episodes of the hit HTV show. No-one noticed, and it became part of the History curriculum in English and Welsh schools until 1998.  

THE TERRIFYING AND UNKNOWABLE FACES OF PREHISTORY

Number Two & Three:

Riace Bronzes

(Greece) circa 460-430 BC

MEGALITHIC

Here's a TOMTIT exclusive, a very old, very rare postcard that shows Stonehenge actually under construction. Sadly, the postal service would not be invented for another 3,500 years, so the back of the card is blank.  

NOT WITHOUT TRACE

Ancient Civilisations were savage, terrifying things, weren't they? In fact, we're sometimes GLAD they were lost.

Take this imposing gateway in Crete, for instance. These stone horns surmounted the palace of Minos and represented the souls of sacrificed bulls. They are symbols of blood and fear and death, and, gateway or not, we're not going in.  

A Mycenaean death mask, modelled from gold and a picture of Stan Laurel.

A Cretan Snake Goddess. She looks angry. And deadly. Oh, and she's suffered a 'wardrobe malfunction' - a nip slip, in modern parlance, and she's going to kill you for noticing.

Another death mask, purported to be Agamemnon, i.e. Sean Connery in 'Time Bandits'.

Our records indicate that we do actually have a copy of 'Lost Worlds, Volume 1' in our archive but, embarrassingly, we can't find it.

VANISHED PEOPLES

Where did they go? Hold on, isn’t that them behind that rock?

Incredibly popular on its publication in 1976 (in Chesterfield, knowledge hungry kids pounced on it, borrowing it as much as twice in nine years), this book was part of a series that included ‘Fakes, Frauds and Phonies’, ‘Strange, Sudden and Unexpected’, ‘Catastrophe, Calamity and Cataclysm’ and ‘A Child’s Treasury Of Speculative Bullshit’.