Somerset Shocking, Surprising and Strange

“For scenes of loveliness, Somerset may challenge any county in England.” And yet, for all its beauty, there lurks in the dark corners of Somerset’s history much that is disturbing and dangerous if not simply downright odd. Jack Sweet has collected together fifty tales of murder, mayhem and mishap, ranging from Mary Adlam killing her drunken husband in Regency Bath, a test flight crash at Yeovil and mine disasters in the Somerset coalfields, to the missing ballot papers of Langport in the parish council elections of 1894 and the Reckleford School Riot of 1921. Along the way we meet highwaymen and hangmen, poachers and gamekeepers, misfits and war heroes. Together these stories present a vivid – sometimes tragic but often quirky – picture of Somerset at its most shocking, surprising and strange.