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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Madame Tussaud's
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(London NW1)
Waxworks museum which is one of Britain's most popular fee-paying tourist attractions. It derives from a museum established in Baker Street in 1835 by Madame Tussaud (Marie Grosholtz, 1761–1850, m. François Tussaud 1795). Her mother had been housekeeper to a modeller in wax; Marie studied with him as a child and helped him with his wax museum, which she inherited in 1794.
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Newly famous figures in British life – politicians, pop stars, footballers – rapidly appear in wax at Madame Tussaud's, and the visit of the living person to view the meticulously detailed life-size replica is a well-established photo opportunity. There are also famous tableaux and permanent exhibitions, enlivened nowadays by elaborate lighting and sound effects. They include a scene on a gun deck of HMS *Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar, and the perennial Chamber of Horrors – offering bloody glimpses of torture through the ages, with representations of a *bride in the bath or a victim of *Jack the Ripper.
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She moved in aristocratic circles, as an art tutor at *Versailles, and during the *French Revolution she made a speciality of providing death masks from guillotined heads. She came to England in 1802 and toured her collection round the country until settling it in London in 1835. It moved to its present site in the Marylebone Road in 1884, where a second attraction – Britain's first planetarium – was opened in an adjoining building in 1958.
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