BLACK PLAQUES: LONDON - Memorials to Misadventure

The perfect antidote to run-of-the-mill guidebook spiel on such sites as Covent Garden, Regent Street or Banqueting House, this book besmirches the reputation of umpteen less prominent addresses. The author discovered that at Saint Paul's Cathedral in 1514 a man was murdered by virtue of a red hot needle thrust up his nose and the perpetrators of this impolite enterprise were churchmen who endeavoured to make it look like suicide! Black Plaques are not to be found proudly mounted on a wall, and for good reason. What with their commemoration of a brutal execution outside Westminster Abbey, the selling of sex toys in St James's Park and an intruder at Buckingham Palace with Royal undergarments stuffed down his trousers, this is not sort of historical subject matter that authorities choose to grace a building's facade or depict on a visitor information board. But this book jogs such artful lapses of memory and at more than 100 locations across London, Black Plaques lift the carefully placed rug to discover an unsightly, but strangely beckoning, stain. The author gleefully shines a spotlight on women's breasts offered up to the caresses of a dead man's hand, and boy's buttocks yielding to the vigorous attentions of the Bishop of London. Nicley illus 360 page paperback.