The fascinating secrets behind 4 of your favourite books
Books have the power to make us laugh, make us cry and make us think, but often there’s more to our favourite novels than meets the eye. Here, we take a look at some of the fascinating stories surrounding some of our all-time favourite books.
1. The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
You might expect to learn a thing or two from a classic novel, but you never think that knowledge might one day save a life. That’s exactly what happened in 1977, when a 19-month-old girl arrived at a London hospital with a condition doctors weren’t able to identify.
At the time, one of the girl’s nurses was reading Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse and upon reading the author’s description of thallium poisoning, she instantly recognised the girl’s symptoms. As a result of her quick identification, doctors were able to save the girl’s life.
2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The title of Bradbury’s famous dystopian novel is believed to be a reference to the temperature at which paper catches fire and burns. The number was right, but not the unit – fire burns at 451 degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit. It was an honest mistake – the fire security specialist Bradbury had consulted while working on the novel had confused the two temperature scales.
3. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Hugo was on holidays when Les Misérables was published, so naturally wanted to check in to see how it was going. The author sent a single-character telegram to his publisher: a question mark – “?”. Their response? An exclamation mark – “!” – to indicate the book’s success.
4. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Fleming began writing his first Bond book while travelling in Jamaica, where he spent much of his time birdwatching. It was at this time that he came across a book titled Birds of the West Indies by American ornithologist, James Bond. According to Fleming, that name was just what he needed – “brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, and yet very masculine.”
If you look closely in the 20th Bond film, Die Another Day, you can see the fictional Bond examining the real Bond’s ornithology book while in Havana, Cuba.