50 People Who Buggered Up Britain

50 People Who Buggered Up Britain

Author: Quentin Letts

Publisher: Constable

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 184901163X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


50 People Who Buggered Up Britain

50 People Who Buggered Up Britain

Author: Quentin Letts

Publisher: Constable & Robinson Ltd

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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

Patronising Bastards

Author: Quentin Letts

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2017-10-12

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 147212734X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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

Feckers: 50 People Who Fecked Up Ireland

Author: John Waters

Publisher: Constable

Published: 2011-10-06

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 184901924X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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...


50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa

50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa

Author: Alexander Parker

Publisher:

Published: 2013-03-19

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780987043726

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Part history and 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 on its way to answering the question, Who are the greatest villains, the direst leaders, the foulest corrupters, and the most offensive personalities to have spread their regrettable influence throughout the land? From Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 to Jacob Zuma in 2012--via Wouter Basson, P. W. Botha, Shaka, and Schabir Shaik--the book focuses on men (and three women) of infamy who jeopardized the nation by virtue of their ruinous megalomania (Thabo Mbeki, Cecil Rhodes), foul convictions (Hendrik Verwoerd, Eugène Terre'Blanche), or, in the author's opinion, general idiocy (Julius Malema, Alec Erwin). Beyond the obvious political manipulators and historical figures, however, this collection also includes statesmen and sportsmen of dubious distinction, as well as nonpareil social delinquents such as minibus taxi drivers.


The Speaker's Wife

The Speaker's Wife

Author: Quentin Letts

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2015-11-26

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1472121996

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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

Stop Bloody Bossing Me About

Author: Quentin Letts

Publisher: Constable

Published: 2021-11-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780349135175

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

'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


Letts Rip!

Letts Rip!

Author: Quentin Letts

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781849016483

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A fantastic collection of Quentin Letts' best writing.


The Well of Lost Plots

The Well of Lost Plots

Author: Jasper Fforde

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2004-08-03

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 110115862X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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


The Biteback Dictionary of Humorous Political Quotations

The Biteback Dictionary of Humorous Political Quotations

Author: Fred Metcalf

Publisher: Biteback Publishing

Published: 2012-10-15

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1849544840

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Politics is no laughing matter - unless you've got Fred Metcalf's Dictionary of Humorous Political Quotations. From the wit that made Boris a contender to the best of George W. Bush, this book will have you in stitches. Bankers to bin Laden, bumper stickers to Biden, and even a few topics that don't begin with B, Metcalf has them all covered. Churchill's gravitas meets Jon Stewart's modern parody - if you have a political (or a funny) bone in your body, you need this book. I loved it!" Louise Mensch. With this brilliant anthology of mieux mots used in the theatre of politics over the centuries, Fred Metcalf has conjured an indispensable tool for both the seasoned public speaker and the armchair quotation-collector alike. Combining politics with a liberal dose of sex, drugs and Frank Zappa, Metcalf has produced a hearty panoply of memorable political rhetoric to cover any occasion - a remedy for those improvising amid impassioned response as well as those polishing their argument with the choicest of truisms.