Whimwondery: An Alphabetarium of Useful Nonsense Inventions Daniel J. T. McKay 9781739731441

Whimwondery is the academical study of the magickal properties of elemental curiosity and its two sub-particles - whimsy and wonder. For, as perhaps you have felt yourself deep down in your gizzards, in every spark of curiosity, every maddening ponderation, every look of bafflement and inquisitive squint, is power beyond reckoning. Though not, as has been discovered, entirely beyond the capacities of our imaginations. Indeed, as we have sought to know more about Whimwondery, we have slowly stumbled upon its useful, worthy, and practical applications for solving vexsome sundry irks and problems which arouse particular and general bother - from cold custard to the meaning of the universe. This alphabetarium includes a smattering of such curious contraptions from Agatha Aspinal's Auspicious Archaeofuturometer, to Zurishaddai Zirdlestone's Zooshing Zenithender. Though a mere sampling of some of the inventions devised to channel whimwondrous phenomena they are sure to delight and amuse all whom you would care to furnish with such an odd and uncategorisable tome (in no particular order): acquaintances, friends, friends-of-friends, jilted-lovers, distant relations, neighbours, academical colleagues, drinking-pals, the local parson, your mother and other assorted personages. A splendid gift for all of them, most assuredly!

Daniel J. T. McKay is a Cambridge-based historian, writer, and illustrator. He is the scion of a long line of cattle farmers in the Australian outback. Growing up in a terrible drought, he learnt to draw in the dust of a dry creek-bed.

Having since sought out a green and pleasant land, Daniel recently completed a PhD in History at the University of Cambridge, as a member of Peterhouse, the oldest, smallest (and some might say quirkiest) college. Daniel's work draws on his passion for history and delights in the forgotten, curious and, archaic.

Inspired by his surroundings in Cambridge, the burgeoning study of Whimwondery has been growing ever more serious over the past few years and now, for the first time has been ransacked from his imagination and scrawled and scroobled upon the page by ink-smudged hands for the perusal of the public.

In the moments when his imagination is chained up and told to behave, Daniel is a historian of political history. Presently, he is a Bye-Fellow of Emmanuel College and Director of their educational enrichment programme. Daniel is also an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society. He has degrees in law, history, and politics, and previously worked in the Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Library, the Country Education Foundation, and as a farm hand. Though harbouring no romantic ambitions to be a farmer himself, he retains his love of cows and their frolicsome and silly moods on windy days.