From a flat Earth to Australia s inland sea : Map mistakes revealed
Australia had a vast inland sea, California was an island - along with Korea - and bizarre and terrifying sea creatures populated the oceans. Welcome to the cartography of yesteryear, when maps were informed not just by mathematics and exploration, but also by huge dollops of folklore and imaginative speculation - as fascinating book The Phantom Atlas, the Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching reveals. His intriguing tome gathers together the wildest misbeliefs ever drawn on maps, revealing the world as it existed purely in the imaginations of our ancestors .
Edward Brooke-Hitching in conversation with John Lloyd
This is an online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time
Edward Brooke-Hitching talks to TV producer and writer John Lloyd (
Blackadder, QI and much more) about his new book
The Madman’s Library, a journey that takes us into the darkest territories of literature, to hunt down the very strangest books ever written and uncover the fascinating stories behind their creation.
From a gorgeously decorated 15th-century lawsuit filed by the Devil against Jesus to a 605-page Qur an written in the blood of Saddam Hussein, to the lost art of binding books with human skin, every strand of strangeness imaginable (and many inconceivable) has been unearthed. Books that hoaxed the globe and books invisible to the naked eye, books of code and cypher whose secrets remain undiscovered… and others that are just plain weird. Several have been uncover