Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

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Photograph: Heritage Images/Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images View image in fullscreen Cléo de Mérode … ‘a peculiar fixation gripped the media: what did her ears look like?

The book parodies the cult of celebrity brought on by simply being on television and says in the credits that "without [the Big Brother contestants] this novel would not have been written". He has presented and featured on TV shows for the BBC, and written for BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE, HISTORY REVEALED MAGAZINE and THE HUFFINGTON POST. But uniting them all is the shared origin point: since the early 1700s, celebrity has been one of the most emphatic driving forces in popular culture; it is a lurid cousin to Ancient Greek ideas of glorious and notorious reputation, and its emergence helped to shape public attitudes to ethics, national identity, religious faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender roles.He is especially good on the economics of fame, that increasingly elaborate, corrupt capitalist machine in which individual celebrities are but small whirring cogs, trying to grab their own share of the profits before their time is up. London is an ancient city built upon the bones of its ancestors, with a rich history founded on the fascinating people who have shaped its future, forgotten yet immortal. Responding to 50 genuine questions from the public, Greg whisks you off on an entertaining tour through the ages, revealing the best and most surprising stories, facts, and historical characters from the past.

On TV, he co-hosted BBC2's INSIDE VERSAILLES discussion programme for two series, and was one of the expert panellists on BBC2’s THE GREAT HISTORY QUIZ (broadcast on Christmas Eve 2015), joining team captains Lucy Worsley and Dan Snow. He has written two previous books - A MILLION YEARS IN A DAY and DEAD FAMOUS: AN UNEXPECTED HISTORY OF CELEBRITY. DEAD FAMOUS is a surprising, funny, and fascinating exploration of both a bygone age and how we came to inhabit our modern, fame obsessed society.We all live in a world where ‘celebrity’ is encounter around every corner, but where did this idea of celebrity begin? Greg reveals why celebrity burst into life in the early eighteenth century, how it differs to ancient ideas of fame, the effect it had on public tastes, and the psychological burden stardom could place on those in the glaring limelight. As in his previous, action-packed bestseller, A Million Years in a Day, Jenner here moves back and forth through the centuries at a pace, as he examines different types of celebrity, the imagery of fame, tactics of self-promotion, the fascination with celebrities’ bodies, and the joys and pitfalls of fanhood. The novel jumps back and forth in time to show the events in the live video recordings, leading up to the night of the murder, where the remaining eight housemates at the time had to remain in an Indian sweat box—an old-style sauna with a pitch-black interior, the intention being to prompt the housemates to have sex.