The Weirdest Ever Notes and Queries (A Guardian book) - Softcover

The X-Files operates on the principle that ‘The Truth is out There Somewhere’ – we know where: it’s in the weirdly wise outpourings of the Notes & Queries writers.

A grand selection of, even by the standards of Notes & Queries, the weirdest questions and answers that have been raised from the mysterious collective consciousness. Enquiries into the unexplained: the goldfish with a really long memory; the pigeon chick that looked like a dodo; the final fate of the Marie Celeste, including a death in detitution, a lunatic and a suicide; matters divine: the mark of the beast; the masonic pyramoid on the US dollar bill; the vertical burial of the dead in Surrey; the final berth of Noah’s Ark; secret societies: the Flat Earth Society; the London Underground Cant Rail Code; C15; the Society of the Spectacle; and the just plain weird: imaginary refrigerators, the errata slip that was introduced by mistake, sheep that give birth when the tide is high (clone that!), and surgeons who operate on themselves. This lot makes the X-Files look like Gardeners’ Question Time.

Joseph Harker is Managing Editor of the features department and has been the Notes & Queries editor for the last four years.