Waxing lyrical

15 MELTING HOT FACTS ON TUSSAUDS

- JAMES MOORE

It was opened in London in 1835 by French sculptor Marie Tussaud, who had started making wax models of famous figures like the writer Voltaire. She was jailed during the French Revolution and forced to make death masks of her ex-employers Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

After travelling across Europe with an exhibition of her wax figures, she later settled in London. Early visitors to her Baker Street attraction could marvel at the likenesses of Lord Nelson and a Chamber of Horrors featuring notorious murderers of the day.

Then Madame Tussauds moved to its current site in 1884. It was devastated by fire in 1925 and a German World War Two bomb destroyed 352 head moulds in 1940.