John Lloyd

'I love these books ... the best books ever. Brilliant' Chris EvansThis is an astonishing trove of the strangest, funniest, and most improbable tidbits of knowledge from the clever lot at the hugely popular BBC quiz show QI.The sock-blasting, jaw-dropping, side-swiping phenomenon that is QI serves up a sparkling new selection of 1,342 facts to leave you flabbergasted.Did you know that:Trees sleep at night.Google searches for 'How to put on a condom' peak at 10.28pm.There is no word for time in any Aboriginal language.Scotland has 421 words for snow.Emoji is the fastest growing language in history.Astronauts wear belts to stop their trousers falling up.The name Donald means 'ruler of the world'.Tanks are exempt from London's Congestion charge.The world's only Cornish pasty museum is in Mexico.When you blush so does the lining of your stomach.A group of unicorns is called a blessing.If there are any facts you don't believe, or if you want to know more about them, all the sources can be found on www.qi.com

The threat of terrorism and the increasing power of terrorist groups has prompted a rapid growth of the security services and changes in legislation, permitting the collection of communications data. This provides journalism with acute dilemmas. The media claims responsibility for holding power to account, yet cannot know more than superficial details about the newly empowered secret services. This book is the first to analyze, in the aftermath of the Snowden/NSA revelations, relations between two key institutions in the modern state: the intelligence services and the news media. It provides the answers to crucial questions including: how can power be held to account if one of the greatest state powers is secret? How far have the Snowden/NSA revelations damaged the activities of the secret services? And have governments lost all trust from journalists and the public?

The New York Times best-selling authors of the Quite Interesting series have made you see sideways, knocked your socks off, and left your jaw on the floor. Now John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin are back to offer even more--1,234, to be exact--shocking, enlightening, downright-fun facts that will leave you speechless...and pantomiming for more.Did you know? The Big Bang was not as loud as a Mot rhead concert. Abraham Lincoln was a licensed bartender. According to the company that created her, Hello Kitty isn't a cat. Albert Einstein's eyeballs are in a safety deposit box in New York. McDonald's once created bubble-gum-flavored broccoli. It is impossible to hum and whisper at the same time. Convinced it's all hogwash? Visit QI.com/US1234 for proof of the veracity of every fact. Want more? Check out 1,411 Quite Interesting Facts to Knock You Sideways, 1,339 Quite Interesting Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop, and 1,227 Quite Interesting Facts to Blow Your Socks Off.

The Museum of Curiosity is BBC Radio 4's monumental comedy edifice, and the only one with gargoyles in the foyer. It allows nothing inside that doesn’t make you scratch your head, stroke your chin or, at the very least, go 'Hmm'. Fortunately, helping to fill its vacant plinths is a gathering of the world's most original minds.Among the guests bearing donations to the museum in these 25 episodes are Neil Gaiman, Sarah Millican, Clive James, Kate Adie, Sir Terry Pratchett, Ronni Ancona, Jon Ronson, Bettany Hughes, Ben Elton, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Alain de Botton, Charlotte Uhlenbroek, Alistair Fothergill, Ruth Padel, Jonathan Miller, Lucie Green, Marcus du Sautoy, Sara Wheeler, Brian Eno, Shappi Khorsandi, John Hodgman, Chris Addison, Roger Law, Tim Minchin, Philip Pullman, Richard Wiseman, Victoria Finlay, Simon Singh, Jimmy Carr, Graham Linehan, Sarah Bakewell, Robin Ince, David Eagleman, Natalie Haynes, Brian Blessed, Alan Davies, Gareth Edwards, Martha Reeves, Harry Enfield, Helen Scales, Admiral Alan West & many more.In addition to all the episodes from the first four series, a previously unbroadcast pilot episode, The Professor of Curiosity, is also included. Running time: 12 hours approx.

'I love these books ... the best books ever. Brilliant' Chris EvansThe fourth in QI's bestselling facts series - 1,234 QI Facts to Leave You Speechless is filled to the brim with astonishing facts that will leave you befuddled, bemused and bewildered. The QI team have blown your socks off, made your jaw drop and knocked you sideways. Now they return with 1,234 brand-new mind-blowing facts that will leave you utterly speechless. Did you know: Flowers get suntans. Denmark imports prisoners. Bees can fly higher than Mount Everest. The Republic of Ireland first got postcodes in 2015. Martin Luther King Jr got a C+ in Public Speaking. No one in the UK dies of 'natural causes'. Penguins can't taste fish.

Seed inoculation is the practice of effectively introducing a high number of nitrogen-fixing bacteria (Rhizobium or Bradyrhizobium) on the surface of legume seeds prior to planting. The bacteria penetrates the root, resulting in the formation of root nodules that fix nitrogen from the air, and make it readily available to the plant. This book describes the need, the development and the use of rhizobia, and how this process may be reproduced successfully around the world, especially in underdeveloped agricultural countries.

We live in a world in which there are two centres of power. One is the Enlightenment State: the world of government, the judiciary, science and academia, in which people are innocent until proven guilty; experts are respected; ideas take precedence over feelings; and trust exists between the principals. But, in the last forty years, a second source of power has arisen that is brash and noisy and challenges the Enlightenment State like nothing before. It is called the Republic of Entertainment and it is embodied by the mass media. In the Republic of Entertainment, people are guilty even if proved innocent, experts speak mostly for vested interests, feelings and emotions are more important than ideas, and no-one in authority can be trusted. This controversial, brave and important book argues that, if civil society as we know it is to survive, the Republic of Entertainment must be confronted and its power laid bare. This book will change decisively the way many of us think about the role of the media.

Public relations and journalism have had a difficult relationship for over a century, characterised by mutual dependence and - often - mutual distrust. The two professions have vied with each other for primacy: journalists could open or close the gates, but PR had the stories, the contacts and often the budgets for extravagant campaigns. The arrival of the internet, and especially of social media, has changed much of that. These new technologies have turned the audience into players - who play an important part in making the reputation, and the brand, of everyone from heads of state to new car models vulnerable to viral tweets and social media attacks. Companies, parties and governments are seeking more protection - especially since individuals within these organisations can themselves damage, even destroy, their brand or reputation with an ill-chosen remark or an appearance of arrogance. The pressures, and the possibilities, of the digital age have given public figures and institutions both a necessity to protect themselves, and channels to promote themselves free of news media gatekeepers. Political and corporate communications professionals have become more essential, and more influential within the top echelons of business, politics and other institutions. Companies and governments can now - must now - become media themselves, putting out a message 24/7, establishing channels of their own, creating content to attract audiences and reaching out to their networks to involve them in their strategies Journalism is being brought into these new, more influential and fast growing communications strategies. And, as newspapers struggle to stay alive, journalists must adapt to a world where old barriers are being smashed and new relationships built - this time with public relations in the driving seat. The world being created is at once more protected and more transparent; the communicators are at once more influential and more fragile. This unique study illuminates a new media age.

1,227 QI Facts blew your socks off. 1,339 QI Facts made your jaw drop. Now the QI team return with this year's groaning sack of astonishment. Prepare to be knocked sideways ... Orchids can get jetlag. Lizards can't walk and breathe at the same time. There are 177,147 ways to tie a tie. Ladybird orgasms last for 30 minutes. Traffic lights existed before cars. Sir Bruce Forsyth is four months older than sliced bread. The soil in your garden is 2 million years old. If there are any facts you don't believe, or if you want to know more about them, all the sources can be found on qi.com

EVERYTHING TO PLAY FOR - A NEW BOOK BY QI ELVES JAMES HARKIN AND ANNA PTASZYNSKI - IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER NOW'I love these books ... the best books ever. Brilliant' Chris Evans1,399 QI Facts To Make Your Jaw Drop by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson and James Harkin is packed with even more fascinating facts.Whilst you're bending over to grab your socks following the succes of 1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off, don't forget pick up your jaw as the QI team returns with a fresh stack of facts to astonish and enlighten.Did you know that:Pigs suffer from anorexia.It is impossible to whistle in a spacesuit.The first computer mouse was made of wood.Rugby School's first official rugby kit in 1871 included a bow tie.Lord Kitchener had four spaniels called Shot, Bang, Miss and Damn.J. K Rowling has no middle name.If there are any facts you don't believe, or if you want to know more about them, all the sources can be found on QI's website.

Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's classic humour book, revised and updated and including The Deeper Meaning of Liff.

A liff is a familiar object or experience that English has no word for. Afterliff, its long-awaited sequel, corrects this disgraceful oversight by recycling the names found on signposts.This brilliant successor to Douglas Adams' and John Lloyd's 1983 classic The Meaning of Liff features over 900 essential new definitions, including:Anglesey n.Hypothetical object at which a lazy eye is looking.Badlesmeare n.One who dishonestly ticks the 'I have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions' box.Caterham n.An overwhelming desire to use the Pope's hat as an oven glove.Clavering ptcpl v.Pretending to text when alone and feeling vulnerable in public.Eworthy adj.Of a person: worth emailing but not worth phoning or meeting.Kanumbra n.The sense that someone is standing behind you.Ljubljana interj.What people say to the dentist on the way out.Loughborough n.The false gusto with which children eat vegetables in adverts.Sorrento n.The thing that goes round and round as a YouTube video loads.Uralla n.A towel used as a bathmat. In 1983, John Lloyd and Douglas Adams authored The Meaning of Liff, a bestselling humour classic which went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. John Lloyd's other books include 1,411 QI Facts To Knock You Sideways and The Book of General Ignorance.

'I love these books ... the best books ever. Brilliant' Chris EvansQI is the smartest comedy show on British television, but few people know that we're also a major legal hit in Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Africa and an illegal one on BitTorrent. We also write books and newspaper columns; run some (frankly thriving, if we do say so ourselves) social media pages; and some of us appear on The Zoe Ball Breakfast Showon BBC Radio 2 every week to answer your questions. At the core of what we do is the astonishing fact - painstakingly researched and distilled to a brilliant and shocking clarity. In Einstein's words: 'Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.'Did you know that: Cows moo in regional accents.The entire internet weighs less than a grain of sand.Tintin is called Tantan in Japanese because TinTin is pronounced 'Chin chin' and means penis.The water in the mouth of a blue whale weighs more than its body.Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, it is explicitly illegal in Britain to use a machinegun to kill a hedgehog.1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off will make you look at the universe (and your socks) in an alarming new way.