50 People Who Buggered Up Britain

Author: Quentin Letts
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 184901163X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
From the Sunday Times bestselling author Which fifty people made Britain the wreck she is? From ludicrous propagandist Alastair Campbell to the Luftwaffe's allies, the modernist architects, it's time to name the guilty. Quentin Letts sharpens his nib and stabs them where they deserve it, from TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, the dumbed-down buffoon who put the 'h' in Aspidistra, to the perpetrators of the 'Credit Crunch'. Margaret Thatcher ruptured our national unity. The creators of EastEnders trashed our brand over high tea. Thus, he argues, are the people who made our country the ugly, scheming, cheating, beer-ridden bum of the Western world. Here are the fools and knaves and vulgarians who ripped down our British glories and imposed the tawdry and the trite. In a half century we have gone from end-of-Empire to descent-into-Hell.

Patronising Bastards

Author: Quentin Letts
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 147212734X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain, Quentin Letts, comes his blistering new book on how Britain's out-of-touch, illiberal elite fills its boots. 'HILARIOUS' Daily Mail 'With its vicious takedowns, Quentin Letts' laugh-out-loud Patronising Bastards will have the lefty-elite running scared' The Sun Not since Marie Antoinette said 'Let them eat cake' have the peasants been so revolting. Western capitalism's elites are bemused: Brexit, Trump, and maybe more eruptions to follow. But their rulers were so good to them! Hillary Clinton called the ingrates 'a basket of deplorables', Bob Geldof flicked them a V sign, Tony Blair thought voters too thick to understand the question. Wigged judges stared down their legalistic noses at a surging, pongy populous. These people who know best, these snooterati with their faux-liberal ways, are the 'Patronising Bastards'. Their downfall is largely of their own making - their Sybaritic excesses, an obsession with political correctness, the prolonged rape of reason and rite. You'll find these self-indulgent show-ponys not just in politics and the cloistered old institutions but also in high fashion, football, among the clean-eating foodies and at the Baftas and Oscars, where celebritydom hires PR smoothies to massage reputations and mislead, distort, twist. Political columnist and bestselling author Quentin Letts identifies these condescending creeps and their networks, their methods and their dubious morals. Letts kebabs them like mutton. It's baaaahd. It's juicy. Richard Branson, Emma Thompson, Shami Chakrabarti, Jean-Claude Juncker and any head waiter who calls you 'young man' - this one's for you!

Feckers: 50 People Who Fecked Up Ireland

Author: John Waters
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 184901924X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
Which 50 People turned Ireland into the fecked-up country she is today? Bono? Haughey? Louis Walsh? de Valera? It's time to name and shame the great, the good and the gobshites... Conventional wisdom has it that Ireland, after a violent and tragic history, had began to get things right. But when the ill wind of recession cruelly snatched that self-satisfied achievement away, it all seemed like exceedingly back luck. In his 50 brilliantly acerbic portraits Waters reveals a consistent pattern of self-delusion, myopia, inferiority complex, bravado, defeatism, cynicism, sentimentalism and conceit. He traces Ireland's story from the paranoid insularism and cultural myopia that followed national Independence, though the post-Sixties obsession with a faux 'self-confidence', to the final, salutary meltdown of the Celtic Tiger, and strangely lacking either Celts or tigers. Once among the oldest civilization in Europe, Ireland has ended up as a second-rate version of the England it tried to discard. It threw out not merely the bathwater and the baby, but also the bathtub, the sponge and the rubber duck...

The Speaker's Wife

Author: Quentin Letts
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1472121996
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
The Rev Tom Ross's quiet and semi-alcoholic life as chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons is about to be shattered. Pastor Petroc Stone of a central London, evangelical church gives sanctuary to a young man being chased by the police for making an anti-Islamic protest. Politicians rage about the Church of England giving a safe haven to a dangerous criminal and Islamists surround the church building, furious at the boy's insult. Meanwhile, the charismatic, white-maned Don of Doubt, Augustus Dymock, and his secular campaign, the Thought Foundation, are pressuring the Church to sell hundreds of its under-used places of worship. As the stories twist and flow together, Ross finds himself caught up in a world of bribes, violence and political spin and, at high personal cost, he must confront his demons. The Speaker's Wife mixes Westminster intrigue with searching depictions of an England which has neglected its beliefs. Laugh-aloud satire is mixed with moving passages about the human condition and even a fairytale love story.

Stop Bloody Bossing Me About

Author: Quentin Letts
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 9780349135175
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
'The inimitable Quentin Letts dares to say in a new book what we've all been secretly thinking' Mail on Sunday 'Fuming and chuckling by turns' Daily Telegraph 'Underneath the jocularity of Letts's style is a lot of real anger' Roger Lewis, The Times Hands, face, space. Curfews. Don't drink. Bend your knees. Conform, obey, comply - surrender. British life has become infested by bossiness. Post Lockdown, Quentin Letts storms back with a vituperative howl against the 'bossocracy'. They tell us what to do, what to say, how to think. Letts gives them a prolonged, resonant raspberry. He names the guilty men and women: Dominic Cummings, Prof Neil Ferguson, that strutting self-polisher Nicola Sturgeon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cressida Dick, Michael Gove, even the sainted Sir David Attenborough. Bang! They all take a barrel. And then there's publicity-prone plonker Matt Hancock posing for photographs while doing his 'Mr Fit' press-ups. Reasonable people have had enough of being bossed about. And when reasonable people stop respecting the law, society has a problem. 'Brilliantly critical, but always warm-hearted and fair' Rory Knight Bruce, The Field

50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa

Author: Tim Richman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa, originally published in 2010, is the original book in the best-selling and critically acclaimed 50 People series. Part history, part social commentary, 50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa is an engrossing and edifying read that delves into South African politics, war, sport and culture, and answers the question, who are the greatest villains, the direst leaders, the foulest corrupters and the most offensive personalities to have spread their regrettable influence through our fine and glorious land? From Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 to Jacob Zuma in 2016 - via Basson, Botha, Shaka and Shaik - it is filled with the nastiest names to have besmirched our past. These are men of infamy (and three women) who have steered the good ship South Africa firmly in the wrong direction by virtue of their ruinous megalomania (Mbeki, Rhodes), foul convictions (Verwoerd, Terre'Blanche) or general idiocy (Malema, Erwin). But the obvious political gangsters and historical heavy-hitters are just the half of it: there's also the colonial warmonger (Lord Milner), the national embarrassment (Rudolf Straeuli), the societal delinquent (The minibus taxi driver), the unexpected sports villain (Richie Benaud!), the Euro-chancer (Mark Thatcher), the traitor (Kevin Pietersen) and the twat (Kevin Pietersen).'A well-researched, considered look at those who have had an influence on South Africa's progress; or rather, have hindered it.' - City Press 'Entertaining... enlightening... comes highly recommended.' - Business Day 'The writing is sharp and the scope impressive... provides some great moral sword fights and it's worth reading for the cartoons alone.' - Rapport Short-listed for the Nielsen Booksellers' Choice Award 2011 The other books in the 50 People series are: - 50 Flippen Brilliant South Africans (2012)- 50 People Who Messed Up The World (2017)- 50 Who F***ed Up South Africa: The Lost Decade (2020)

The New Enclosure

Author: Brett Christophers
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178663158X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
How public land has been stolen from us. Much has been written about Britain's trailblazing post-1970s privatization program, but the biggest privatization of them all has until now escaped scrutiny: the privatization of land. Since Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, and hidden from the public eye, about 10 per cent of the entire British land mass, including some of its most valuable real estate, has passed from public to private hands. Forest land, defence land, health service land and above all else local authority land- for farming and school sports, for recreation and housing - has been sold off en masse. Why? How? And with what social, economic and political consequences? The New Enclosure provides the first ever study of this profoundly significant phenomenon, situating it as a centrepiece of neoliberalism in Britain and as a successor programme to the original eighteenth-century enclosures. With more public land still slated for disposal, the book identifies the stakes and asks what, if anything, can and should be done.

The Great Betrayal

Author: Rod Liddle
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 1472132378
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
'Very funny' Spectator Book of the Year 'Robust and entertaining' Sunday Times Book of the Year 'Betcha we don't leave.' I wrote that on the evening of 24 June 2016, once the euphoria had passed. A lot of us leavers, despite being elderly and thick, knew. The establishment wouldn't let it happen. Quite how the establishment stopped us from leaving the European Union, though, we could never have guessed. A mandate which became a process and resulted in the UK being the laughing stock of the world. We might have guessed at the relentless howls of outrage from that extreme block of transgressed remainers, the hostility of the House of Commons, the civil service and the BBC. That was a given, and it all played its part. But beyond our imagination was the readiness of politicians to ignore or subvert the vote, the sheer ineptitude of those charged with negotiating our withdrawal, the spite of the EU and the intercession of that usual thing, events. The Great Betrayal tells the story of a failed Brexit and a betrayal of the British people, drawn from interviews with those at the very centre of what became, in the end, a surreal charade.

The Well of Lost Plots

Author: Jasper Fforde
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110115862X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Book Description
The third novel in the New York Times bestselling Thursday Next series is “great fun—especially for those with a literary turn of mind and a taste for offbeat comedy” (The Washington Post Book World). “Delightful . . . the well of Fforde’s imagination is bottomless.”—People “Fforde creates a literary reality that is somewhere amid a triangulation of Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Miss Marple.”—The Denver Post With the 923rd Annual Bookworld Awards just around the corner and an unknown villain wreaking havoc in Jurisfiction, what could possibly be next for Detective Thursday Next? Protecting the world’s greatest literature—not to mention keeping up with Miss Havisham—is tiring work for an expectant mother. And Thursday can definitely use a respite. So what better hideaway than inside the unread and unreadable Caversham Heights, a cliché-ridden pulp mystery in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well itself is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like Caversham Heights—are scrapped for salvage. To top it off, a murderer is stalking Jurisfiction personnel and nobody is safe—least of all Thursday. Don’t miss any of Jasper Fforde’s delightfully entertaining Thursday Next novels: THE EYRE AFFAIR • LOST IN A GOOD BOOK • THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS • SOMETHING ROTTEN • FIRST AMONG SEQUELS • ONE OF OUR THURSDAYS IS MISSING • THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT

Bog-Standard Britain

Author: Quentin Letts
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 1849012229
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Book Description
No one would attack equality, would they? Quentin Letts just might. Not the notion of equality itself but the way it has become an industry for lobbyists, class warriors and New Labour's ageing Trots. Egalitarianism is a mania for today's policymakers and the soupy-brained halfwits we contrive to elect to public office. Appalled by free thinking, these equality junkies want to crush all individualism in our nation of once indignant eccentrics. Equality has been defiled by the ethnic grievance gang, by the harpies of feminist orthodoxy, by those risk-averse jackboots of town-hall bureaucracy with their quotas and creeds. Fair damsel Liberty has been whored by the best practice brigade, by the proceduralists of multinational corporatism in their company ties, by the glottal-stopping, municipal bores who insist that everyone must have prizes and that no culture can be dominant. Tilters against convention are assailed for their 'inappropriate' behaviour. Supporters of grammar schools are 'snobs'. Social nuance, once a vital lure to self-improvement, is deemed 'unacceptable'. Twenty-first century Britain's political cadre is so paralysed by class paranoia that it stops us attaining the best in schools, manners, language, fashion, popular culture. Elitism is a dirty word. The BBC stamps out the Queen's English because it is not 'accessible'. Celebrity morons are cultural pin-ups. Thick rools, OK. The glottal-stopping oikishness of our urban streets can be linked to modern equality's refusal to deplore. The prattishness of Jonathan Ross arises from a mad insistence that vulgarity is valid. Still think equality is such a great thing? You might not after reading this urgent, exasperated, witheringly funny book. Praise for 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain: '[Quentin Letts] discharges his duty with flair and tracer precision...an angry book, beautifully written.' The Spectator