Detective Shaw’s London: Madame Tussauds

Book locations, episode 10

I have already talked about Madame Tussauds in the article dedicated to the Marylebone district (which I invite you to read for more information), but I thought that this very famous wax museum deserved another article entirely focused on it, given the crucial role it plays in the final book of the Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy, “Beyond the Limit”.

It is part of a chain of wax museums, present in twelve different cities around the world, but the first was precisely that of London, founded by the sculptor Marie Tussaud in 1835, the year in which she held the first exhibition of her collection. Currently, the Madame Tussauds museum chain belongs to the English company Merlin Entertainment, which among other things also owns Gardaland in Italy.

I had the pleasure of visiting the museum twice at a great distance in time: once in 1990 and once in 2011. Some parts of the exhibition have not actually changed that much, especially those relating to the reconstructions of scenes from the past, while the waxworks of contemporary celebrities always tend to reflect the fashions of the times and, perhaps, the ageing of public…