Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's best-selling history magazine.

Britain's best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellie Corthorne. In 1726, a woman in Surrey seemingly gave birth to rabbits. In 1749, an advert appeared, claiming that a man could climb inside a wine bottle on stage.

In today's episode, I spoke to Ian Keeble, who's the author of a new book called The Century of Deception,

about some of the most audacious, bizarre and inventive pranks that fooled 18th century Britain.

What kind of pranks did you uncover in England's Century of Deception, as you call it in the title? Yes, when I came to write the book,

I wanted to have as many sort of diverse possible hoaxes. So there were a lot to choose from,

but I sort of picked out the ones which I thought were

most interesting and most fun and most entertaining. So they cover all areas, I guess, of hoaxes, from sort of

literary hoaxes where William Henry Ireland decided that he wanted to forge Shakespearean papers and eventually came up with a full play called Vortigun, which he forged, down to the outwardly very amusing Mary Toft, who claimed that she gave birth to rabbits.

I'm in a caparava, which are very different, George Sarmannazar, who claimed that he came birth to rabbits. I'm in a couple of Rava, which are very different,

George Sarmannazar, who claimed that he came from Taiwan.

It's now Taiwan.

It used to be called Formosa back in the 18th century

and wrote an entirely sort of fictitious book

all about the island and its history

and what the inhabitants apparently were up to.

And then you've got something like the rather bizarre cockling ghost,

where this ghost comes back from the dead and claims that she had been murdered.

So you can see, yeah, a whole spectrum of different hoaxes involved.

Yeah, and hopefully we'll dig into a few of those in more

detail later in the conversation because I'm sure people will be very intrigued by

vengeful ghosts and a woman giving birth to rabbits. But before we do, what are you defining as a

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