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Russell Ash has trawled parish registers and censuses going back 900 years to compile the first ever complete book of breathtakingly unlikely-but-true British names. It features an incredible and diverse range of totally genuine names, evoking everything from body parts (Dick Brain), sex (Matilda Suckcock), illness (Barbaray Headache) and toilet functions (Peter Piddle) to food (Hazel Nutt), animals (Minty Badger) and places (Phila Delphia). Every single one has been checked for authenticity and its source is given, as well as extra notes where further fascinating illumination is possible. The book provides a rigorously researched yet laugh-out-loud overview of Britain’s eccentricity through the ages. And in this fully revised, expanded and enhanced paperback edition, it is no exaggeration to say that it’s Pottier, Fartier and Knobbier than ever before.
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Reviews
'Sometimes it can feel as though so much of what we love about the British character has been stamped out by the joyless indifference of the Call Centre mob. You know the ones: 'Your call is Held in a Queue, You Will be Answered Shortly.' They have sapped our will to live, but, even worse, they have sapped our will to laugh. So let me recommend a hilarious new book called Potty, Fartwell And Knob: Extraordinary Names of True People. Some of the names it has traced are not suitable for a family newspaper. But all of them make you happy to belong to a people who believe it is their patiortic duty not to take themselves too seriously.'
'Hilarious... [the names] make you happy to belong to a people who believe it is their patriotic duty not to take themselves too seriously'