WHAT do you get for the person who has everything? Why not something a little odd?
The Odditorium is a celebration of eccentricity.
The pages of this little hardback book by David Bramwell and Jo Keeling retells history through the eyes of lesser-known individuals and their obsessions, achievements and failures. It includes tricksters, deviants and inventors whose obsessions changed the world.
For instance, there is prankster Reginald Bray, the Victorian accountant who sent more than 30,000 singular objects through the Royal Mail, including his Irish terrier and himself.
Cyril Hoskin, a Cornish plumber, reinvented himself as Tibetan lama Lobsang Rampa and sold more than a million paranormal and occult books.
And who can forget Prince Roy of Sealand, the pirate radio DJ who founded his own micronation?
The book also uncovers the obsessions of better-known people, such as Sir Isaac Newton. History skimmed over his love of alchemy, which led him to a lifetime’s search for the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life
It’s certain to delight anyone with a healthy curiosity or a penchant for whacky conversations.
- The Odditorium, by David Bramwell and Jo Keeling, published by Hachette Books, RRP $32.99.
