From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

The QI Book of the Dead

Field	Value
name	The QI Book of the Dead
image	The QI Book of the Dead.jpg
caption	The UK cover.
author	John Lloyd
John Mitchinson
country	United Kingdom
language	English
subject	Obituaries/Trivia
publisher	Faber and Faber
pub_date	5 November 2009
media_type	Hardback
pages	435
isbn	978-0-571-24490-4
preceded_by	Advanced Banter
followed_by	The Second Book of General Ignorance

John Mitchinson

The QI Book of the Dead (sold as The Book of the Dead in the United States) is the fourth title in a series of books based on the intellectual British panel game QI, written by series-creator John Lloyd and head-researcher John Mitchinson. It is a book of "quite interesting" obituaries.

Publication history

The QI Book of the Dead was first published by Faber and Faber in hardback on 5 November 2009. The idea of the book originated before the television series QI was broadcast. Mitchinson wrote in an article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper that, "It first appeared on one of our "how to make life more interesting" lists at a time when Stephen Fry's erudite put-downs and the anteater impressions of Alan Davies weren't even gleams in Lloyd's eye."

Structure

The book is divided into 10 chapters, covering 68 different people. However, instead of dividing the chapters into subjects normally found in such books, like "Royalty", "Scientists" and "Sportsmen", The QI Book of the Dead uses "more diverting categories". Examples include "There's Nothing Like a Bad Start in Life", covering people who had bad childhoods; "Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone", about people with unusual diets; and "Is That All There Is?" about people interested in life after death.

Reception

Ian Wolf for the British Comedy Guide was mostly positive with his review, saying: "The QI Book of the Dead is definitely an enjoyable read, and makes for a great gift idea. For one thing, it allows us to look back and learn on the mistakes of our ancestors. Amongst those ancestors are Confucius and Nefertiti, whom everyone in the world is related to... interesting, isn't it!"

However, Wolf also wrote that the book made mistakes. He wrote that the book wrongly claimed that Lord Shelburne was Prime Minister, when in fact he was First Lord of the Treasury, with the title of "Prime Minister" not being used to describe the leader of the British government until a century after Shelburne died by Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

Obituaries

The people covered in The QI Book of the Dead are as follows.

Chapter	Title	Subject
1	There's Nothing like a Bad Start in Life	People with unhappy childhoods
2	Happy-go-lucky	People who were always happy
3	Driven	The highly motivated
4	Let's Do It	The sex mad
5	Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone	People with strange diets
6	Grin and Bear It	The pain ridden and disabled
7	The Monkey-Keepers	People who kept pet monkeys
8	Who Do You Think You Are?	Impostors
9	Once You're Dead, You're Made for Life	People who died penniless
10	Is That All There Is?	People interested in life after death

References

Wolf, Ian. "'QI' Merchandise". British Comedy Guide.
Mitchinson, John. (24 November 2009). "QI Book of the Dead - exclusive extracts from the brains behind the tv show". [[The Daily Telegraph]].
Wolf, Ian. (1 December 2009). "The QI Book of the Dead Review". [[British Comedy Guide]].
Lloyd, John. (5 November 2009). "The QI Book of the Dead". [[Faber and Faber]].

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

books-based-on-qi trivia-books british-non-fiction-books books-by-john-lloyd-(producer) 2009-non-fiction-books faber-&-faber-books cultural-depictions-of-leonardo-da-vinci cultural-depictions-of-sigmund-freud cultural-depictions-of-isaac-newton cultural-depictions-of-lord-byron cultural-depictions-of-hans-christian-andersen cultural-depictions-of-salvador-dalí cultural-depictions-of-benjamin-franklin depictions-of-genghis-khan-in-literature cultural-depictions-of-giacomo-casanova cultural-depictions-of-catherine-the-great cultural-depictions-of-h.-g.-wells cultural-depictions-of-empress-elisabeth-of-austria cultural-depictions-of-henry-ford cultural-depictions-of-howard-hughes cultural-depictions-of-florence-nightingale cultural-depictions-of-oliver-cromwell cultural-depictions-of-catherine-de'-medici cultural-depictions-of-rembrandt cultural-depictions-of-frida-kahlo cultural-depictions-of-titus-oates cultural-depictions-of-alessandro-cagliostro cultural-depictions-of-emma,-lady-hamilton cultural-depictions-of-nikola-tesla cultural-depictions-of-karl-marx

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about The QI Book of the Dead — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report