The talented folks at The History Press have been busy zombifying images of the good, the bad and the ugly from British history for my forthcoming book Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide. Some of these gruesome images have already been shared in previous posts on this very blog.
And now it is the turn of the humble author himself. Here’s my zombie portrait as it appears on the inside cover of
the book. To me, it seems a distinct improvement on the original…
And here’s the original…
Oliver Cromwell’s body has already had two lives. firstly as Lord Protector after the English Civil War, and secondly two years after his death, when the corpse was dug up and ‘executed’ a second time, in punishment for the
beheading of Charles I. And now, with the imminent onset of the zombie apocalypse, he’s back for a third go,
possibly aided by thousands of Puritan zombie soldiers.
Oliver’s Army are on their way…
As with others in the series (collect the set!) Olly comes from the forthcoming
Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide.
Today’s selection from the forthcoming Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide is St Patrick, the patron saint of
Ireland.
The whereabouts of St Patrick‘s final resting place are disputed. However, as he supposedly banished snakes from Ireland, you could perhaps locate the holy herpetophobe by taking along a reptile or two.
As Indiana Jones said, “Snakes. Why does it have to be snakes?”
Here’s another historical zombie, in this case King Alfred the Great, who most people remember for incinerating
some baked goods, but who was actually one of the most able Anglo-Saxon kings of Dark Age England, taking on
the Vikings to boot.
As with the other images in this series, this regal zombie comes from the forthcoming
Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide.
Today’s zombie taken from the upcoming Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide is none other than Macbeth,
King of Scots.
However, forget everything you think you know about Macbeth. Shakespeare’s play is a fantasy, based on false
propagandist historical accounts. Macbeth was a hereditary mormaer or regional lord of Moray, at a time when
most Scottish nobles perished at the hands of their power-hungry relatives. Macbeth got the job by killing his
cousins (who themselves had murdered his father). Another power struggle developed when Duncan I – who, in
contrast to his aged portrayal by Shakespeare, was only in his thirties – became King of Scots. Macbeth killed him
in a skirmish.
King Macbeth went on to reign for seventeen years, feeling so secure as to go on pilgrimage to Rome, the only
Scottish king to do so.
And now he’s back: is this a zombie I see before me…?
Another image torn freshly bleeding from the pages of the upcoming Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide, the all-in-one guidebook on how to take out sixty high-value targets from Britain’s illustrious (and ignoble) past.
This time we present one of the titans of modern science, Mr Charles Darwin. One wonders what the father of
evolution through natural selection will make of the zombie apocalypse…
Take heed: Charles Darwin is smarter than you. His zombie may be too. Approach with caution.
