I Told You I Was Sick is a selection of mostly comic epitaphs and some that are not comic at all - though they might well be called curious. As such, it continues the centuries old custom of collecting epitaphs, but with rather more attempt at accuracy of transcription and location and context. The latest title in the Weidenfeld & Nicolson small-format humour series, I Told You I Was SIck includes 150 epitaphs, each of them explained and located. The epitaphs include that of Keith Woodward, a publican of Shrivenham, Wiltshire, whose dying wish was to have inscribed on his tombstone the words 'I told them I was ill'.) Parish councillors later ordered the message removed.) This 'nice derangement of epitaphs' (as Mrs Malaprop so splendidly remarked in Sheridan's The Rivals), will make the perfect Christmas stocking-filler.
Nigel Rees is a British writer and broadcaster, best known as deviser and presenter of BBC Radio's Quote ... Unquote program which began its long run over 35 years ago. He is a leading authority on quotations and other well-known phrases and sayings, is a past President of the Lichfield Dr Johnson Society and was recently described by The Spectator as 'Britain's most popular lexicographer'.
Born near Liverpool in 1944, Nigel took a degree in English at Oxford and then went straight into television with Granada in Manchester. He made his first TV appearances on local shows in 1967 before moving to London as a freelance. He reported for ITN's News at Ten and then became presenter of a wide range of programs for BBC Radio - news, current affairs, arts and entertainment - including two years on the breakfast-time Today show.
He is the author of more than fifty books - mostly devoted to popular aspects of the English language and especially the humour that derives from it. His most recent titles include: A Word In Your Shell-Like: 6,000 Curious & Everyday Phrases Explained and Brewer's Famous Quotations: 5,000 Quotations and the Stories Behind Them. He is currently publishing e-books under the series title The Best Guide to ------ , including Humorous Quotations and Movie Quotes.
