Old Tom Parr - Cultural References

Cultural References

• John Taylor wrote about Parr in his 1635 poem The Old, Old, Very Old Man or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr.
• A portrait of Parr hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
• His story was featured on the TV show Beyond Belief!! on the American network Nickelodeon in 1992.
• The Scotch whisky brand Old Parr is named for him and recounts his claimed birth and death years on its label.
• Parr has been used as an example of the supposed health benefits of some natural medicines, including herbal colon cleansing.
• In the 1979 film The Champ, a small statue of Parr instigates a conversation between the boy and his stepfather.
• Parr's old age is mentioned in the book Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.
• Parr is named in Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein.
• Bram Stoker makes a reference to Thomas Parr in Dracula.
• Old Parr is mentioned in Dickens's Dombey and Son, chapter XLI.
• Old Parr is mentioned in Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter The Last. A pony who lives an unusually long life is compared to Parr.
• Old Parr is mentioned in Robert Graves's poem A Country Mansion.
• Old Parr is referred to in the opening page of James Joyce's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake.
• Mark Twain, in 1871, "proposed writing 'An Autobiography of Old Parr, the gentleman who lived to be 153 years old' but apparently never did so."
• In Hammersmith, London, there is a pub named "The Old Parrs Head".