Famous Last Words

One last thing before I go . . . True stories of doomed figures from British history—and what they announced to the world as the Grim Reaper drew near.

Nothing focuses the mind more starkly than impending death. In this book, you can mount the scaffold and share in the final utterings of the condemned, and join the stricken in their deathbeds as their deeply entrenched secrets are finally unshackled.

Famous Last Words collects a fascinating selection of destinies, culminating in their often flamboyant, always captivating comments just before they shuffled off this mortal coil. Revealed inside are tales of sangfroid bravery, astonishing ironies, and overdue confessions often betraying grave miscarriages of justice. Writer and poet Sir Walter Raleigh had some typically forthright and goading words for his executioner as the hesitant axeman displayed fear and reluctance to perform his stately duties. The final words of convicted murderer Ernest Brown may have been a candid confession to another killing he had committed deep in the Northumberland Moors some two years previously. And what of Britain’s first actor to have had a knighthood bestowed upon him? Discover the staggering irony that saw his final words on stage prophetically turn out to be his last in life . . .