Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Tardis of a book, 25 Nov 2004
This review is from: Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost and Where Did it Go? (Hardcover)
Pick this up in a Christmas-stacked bookshop and you might think you were browsing (yet) another of those Schott-like lists, albeit an aparently denser one. But do not be deceived by the alphabetical arrangement or the deliciously eccentric index; Bywater's book is not just, or even, a lexicon of loss. It is in reality an autobiography, a celebration of the life of Great Britain in the second half of the C20, its certainties, its conventions, its style and aspirations and of a child growing into a man as some of those solidities proved themselves ephemeral. Darkly elegaic at times, luminous and lyrical at others, angry, affectionate, erudite, self-indulgent and, above all, terribly terribly funny. (Perhaps garters and Virol will come in the second edition?)
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rare,Unusual and very very funny, 28 Nov 2005
By A Customer
This review is from: Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost and Where Did it Go? (Hardcover)
This books sums up the author so totally, with its cocktail of cynicism,nostalgia, hope, angst,resentment, dissatisfaction and almost sentimental yearnings for normality...security....homeliness. This book seems to be intensely personal yet accessible to everyone...we can all remember and indentify with things that he discusses...we get reminded of things from our youth that we had forgotten about and learn about new things that are a focal part of someone else's childhood.But the main thing about Lost Worlds..is that it is unbelievably funny, it had me actually having to lie down cause i got a stitch from laughing...some of the stories will be imprinted on yr brain forever...Its a wonderful, unusual and brilliant book and i thoroughly recommend it.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful, life-affirming book, 9 Feb 2006
I came to this having greatly liked Michael Bywater's work in The Independent and I wasn’t disappointed: it’s a marvellous book that contains nostalgia but which is informed by a very sharp sense of humour. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read ‘Ancients, Wisdom of the,’ and each time it makes me laugh again. Wonderful! Incidentally, theodorawayte is wrong that the Bakelite telephone with its little drawer is missing: it’s right there, in footnote 67, page49, under Bakelite.
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