The QI Book of the Dead is, in fact, a book about life, and lives: we have selected six dozen of the happiest, saddest, maddest and most successful men and women from history – the immortally famous and the undeservedly obscure – to share their secrets, celebrate their wisdom, learn from their mistakes, and marvel at their bad taste in clothes.

Hans Christian Anderson was terrified of naked women. Florence Nightingale spent her last fifty years in bed. Sigmund Freud smoked twenty cigars a day. Catherine de Medici applied a daily face mask made of pigeon dung. Rembrandt van Rijn died penniless. And Madame Mao banned cicadas, rustling noises and pianos.