THIS is a vivid, alternative and fairly disgusting history of Britain from the nation's best loved TV history man. It is published to tie in with the Channel 4 TV series.
As befits the man we all know as Baldrick, Tony Robinson sets out to investigate life in the underbelly of history. From the cleaning of the crotch of a knight's soiled armour after the battle of Agincourt or as "Groomer of the Stool" to Henry VIII - Tony endures it all to get to the bottom (sometimes literally) of the story.
Many of the most famous moments in British history have involved someone having to do something arduous/ unpleasant and overlooked: The Gunpowder Plot drew Tony to the role of the Saltpetre man who collected human waste for its nitrate content to turn into gunpowder. He looks at the dire conditions on Nelson's Victory where the most common form of retirement was being sewn into your hammock with a couple of cannon balls and dropped over the side.
Tony finds a whole cornucopia of lousy jobs behind the beauty of our medieval cathedrals and the wealth created by the Industrial Revolution.
Richly illustrated with artwork, photographs and diagrams, The Worst Jobs in History really gets into the grime of how life was for ordinary people over the last 2,000 years - a history long overlooked and highly unenviable.
The Worst Jobs in History - two thousand years of miserable employment by Tony Robinson (Boxtree, £18.99)
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