Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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if you like greg jenner, the podcast host, the pop historian, the witty nerd - you'll like this book. Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling, titillating, and outraging us for much longer than we might realise. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, coffin-sleeping, one-legged French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who launched a violent feud with her former best friend; or Edmund Kean, the dazzling Shakespearean actor whose monstrous ego and terrible alcoholism saw him nearly murdered by his own audience - the list of stars whose careers burned bright before the Age of Television is extensive and thrillingly varied.

Additionally, the author's use of humour throughout the book added a light-hearted and entertaining element. It was a nice way to read about history, and very much replicates Jenner's podcasting style.

It felt like the author was trying to be slightly too intricate and ultimately, the story did not leave as much of an impact as I was hoping for. Even after the ending, which was extremely tense and one of the most gripping parts of the book, the epilogue wrapped things up a little bit too neatly for my liking.

Horatio Nelson and His Valiant Victory (formerly Horatio Nelson and His Victory) (2003) - Philip Reeve Dead Famous is an exuberant exploration… Jenner expands these vignettes, weaving academic theory and rich analysis into his tales of stardom’s past. The result is not a comprehensive history — Dead Famous focuses largely on the U.K. and the U.S.— but a wonderfully illuminating one” I adore a boarding school book. I think they're so fun and there is so much mystery with twists and turns! Trying to be the popular girl is hard at a boarding school. You live with these people for the majority of the year but, Kate is willing to do what she can to be popular. To get the guy she wants and to have the best last year before she moves on. But, she is hiding a few secrets, secrets from her past and someone knows. Someone knows and Kate needs to figure out who it is before it gets to late and before someone gets hurt. But, one night at a party is going to change everything.Properly live-in-a-country-house, summer-in-Italy posh’ … Florence Nightingale. Photograph: Florence Nighingale Museum/BBC Dervla Nolan, a quiet and mysterious Irish trauma therapist (Revealed to have joined the show in an attempt to gain the prize money to help her family after a recent disaster in her home village) Jenner acts as a kind of Oscar Wilde figure, dispensing wisdom and wit in equal measure, producing a fiendishly enjoyable and thoroughly engaging look at other people’s lives)” Celebrities could be heroes or villains; warriors or murderers; brilliant talents, or fraudsters with a flair for fibbing; trendsetters, wilful provocateurs, or tragic victims marketed as freaks of nature. Some craved fame while others had it forced upon them. A few found fame as small children, some had to wait decades to get their break. But uniting them all is the shared origin point: since the early 1700s, celebrity has been one of the most emphatic driving forces in popular culture; it is a lurid cousin to Ancient Greek ideas of glorious and notorious reputation, and its emergence helped to shape public attitudes to ethics, national identity, religious faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender roles.