Surely there’s nothing unexpected about the past? About History? Aha, well Histories of the Unexpected adopts a new approach to exploring out past. Gone is the traditional linear plotting of battles, monarchs and political movements. Histories of the Unexpected argues that everything has a history. The history of the itch, the history of crawling, the history of clouds or of lightning, or of zombies, or zebras or holes or perfume or rubbish all have fascinating histories of their own, histories that can change the way you think about the past and present. Take the orange. We do not want to teach you who was the first to discover the orange, or grow it, or import it; we do not know who was the first to make orange juice. We want to tell you the unexpected history of the orange. We want to tell you how it was used to make secret ink and was instrumental in the Gunpowder Plot; we want to tell you how the history of the orange is actually about the invention of clinical trials, modern medicine and dogs. We...  

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