Fourth Estate One on One, Literature, Culture & Art, Paperback, Craig Brown
198 ratings
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Price: £12.99
Brand: Fourth Estate
Description: 101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, told by Britain's funniest writer. Fourth Estate One on One, Literature, Culture & Art, Paperback, Craig Brown - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Harper Collins
Product ID: 9780007360642
Delivery cost: Spend £20 and get free shipping
Dimensions: 129x198mm
Keywords: twentieth century history,royal family,meetings,Princess Margaret,book of the year,famous figures,politicians,Adolf Hitler,Noel Coward,humour,Hollywood,six degrees seperation,Marilyn Monroe,humourous
ISBN: 9780007360642
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Author: Dr. Christopher Nancollas
Rating: 5
Review: Craig Brown will be familiar to most people as Britain's foremost satirist, and the author of the merciless Private Eye 'diaries'. In 'One on One' he has taken the brave decision to try something entirely unexpected, recording meetings between famous people in which one leads to another, like a daisy chain. So, the book opens with Adolf Hitler meeting John Scott-Ellis, then Scott-Ellis meets Rudyard Kipling, who then meets Mark Twain and so on through 101 encounters until the Duchess of Windsor meets Adolf Hitler. All the encounters actually took place, and the author has taken great care to record them as accurately as possible. He has also written them as straight prose, with no attempt to tweak them with humour of his own. The result is an absolute page turner, as good as any thriller. Each encounter gives a glimpse, often sidelong, of a famous personality. Some are quite sad, like the picture of a destitute Oscar Wilde lingering in Parisian cafes because he can't pay the bill. Others reveal the true nature of people you had always suspected were pretty ghastly, like Noel Coward and various other effete Englishmen. The Royal Family come across as pretty dull, and the circle surrounding them as equally dull, and sycophantic to boot. On the other hand, you revise your opinions of others - Kingsley Amis has a particularly good entry. The encounters will vary depending on your taste - I was not particularly interested in the Russian section - but they are all interesting, and absolutely addictive. The book would serve as a work of reference, and Craig Brown has helpfully listed his sources at the end. All in all, a triumph.
Author: Dr. P. J. Nickson
Rating: 3
Review: It was on the radio that I first heard the opening story of John Scott-Ellis(of whom I'd never heard) and his non fatal collision with Adolf Hitler in 1931 and I was intrigued. The rest of the book, as it's title suggests is a daisy chain succession of one on one encounters each summarized in a tidy, if somewhat anal, 1001 words. However, the 11 "Book of the Year" accolades and the "laugh out loud" tribute had me expecting better things. A collection of literary figures, royalty, film stars and musicians from the last 100 years or so who bump into one another in often predictable circumstances when the great and the good assemble became somewhat repetitive. It began to read a bit like Hello magazine though with some bizarre anecdotes (did you know Cubby Broccoli's grandfather did bring broccoli from Italy to the USA and successfully grew it?)and sexual titillation (Janis Joplin's "giving me head on an unmade bed" to Leonard Cohen in the Chelsea Hotel. I had a lot of "Well, I never knew that" moments - fascinating, but not literature. Great to have in the toilet and you can read one story in the time it takes to have a decent poo and at this time of the year it would make a good stocking filler. (The book, not the poo).
