A big, generous, fascinating book, best dipped into on a rainy Sunday with the snooker on in the background.

An unholy cross between Douglas Adams and Bill Bryson, this compendium of strange, funny and surprising facts is the perfect loo book.

If you ever wondered what a parsec was, or how language developed, or how many wars have been fought over cows, or whether a large straw goat has ever been held in a secret location by Swedish police, I heartily recommend this book. Elledge's natural curiosity has been brilliantly harnessed, answering questions you didn't know you had with more clarity and wit than is fair for any single writer to contain.

Consistently both entertaining and fascinating. Jonn has explored a lifetime's worth of 2am Wikipedia holes so that you don't have to.

Some of the facts are astonishing....Elledge is very good at reminding us that supposedly hard-and-fast information — the sort that gets quoted in textbooks, and indeed news reports — is often far less certain than we think.