by Mark Steel
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What's Going On?: The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion by Mark Steel |
by Mark Steel
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~ Mark Steel
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by Charlie Brooker
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Product Description
Review
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lost their heads in a crisis, and humorist Mark Steel explains how such a thing can easily happen to the best of us. In what must rank as one of the funniest books of the year, Steel looks at the French Revolution in a way guaranteed to turn today's aristocracy purple with rage. It is history with a Marxist twist - but this Marxism is more of the Groucho variety than the Karl. As in all Steel's writings, both for the Independent and in his previous books Life is not a Runner Bean and Reasons to be Cheerful, there is a serious theme - in this case the uprising that led to the French republic. But history was never taught this way at school. It is a rip-roaring Pythonesque view of things, full of one-liners that will have you laughing out loud. In discussing revolution leader Jean Paul Marat, Steel shows how the less-than-handsome fellow was vilified not so much for what he did politically, but for being ugly which compounded his sins. 'Not only did this bloke lead a revolution, he was a veritable human zoo,' Steel declares. 'If he hadn't been so busy he'd have ended up on the working-men's-club circuit as "the Amazing Beast man, impersonating every creature on the evolutionary scale from crow to toad to horse-leech".' Steel's own first lessons about the Establishment view of the French Revolution came from the TV show Blue Peter, which drummed into children the idea that standing up for equality was somehow Not To Be Tolerated. 'I can't quite recall what followed,' he goes on, 'though presumably someone showed you how to make your own guillotine using a shoebox, an elastic band and a Stanley knife.' You doubt he can keep up this sort of stuff for the length of a book, but he does - and what's more he does it without reducing history to farce. A truly entertaining book, and instructive with it. Not to be missed. (Kirkus UK)
OBSERVER
'A great read. Smart, comic non-fiction is clearly the future' --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
See all Product Description
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lost their heads in a crisis, and humorist Mark Steel explains how such a thing can easily happen to the best of us. In what must rank as one of the funniest books of the year, Steel looks at the French Revolution in a way guaranteed to turn today's aristocracy purple with rage. It is history with a Marxist twist - but this Marxism is more of the Groucho variety than the Karl. As in all Steel's writings, both for the Independent and in his previous books Life is not a Runner Bean and Reasons to be Cheerful, there is a serious theme - in this case the uprising that led to the French republic. But history was never taught this way at school. It is a rip-roaring Pythonesque view of things, full of one-liners that will have you laughing out loud. In discussing revolution leader Jean Paul Marat, Steel shows how the less-than-handsome fellow was vilified not so much for what he did politically, but for being ugly which compounded his sins. 'Not only did this bloke lead a revolution, he was a veritable human zoo,' Steel declares. 'If he hadn't been so busy he'd have ended up on the working-men's-club circuit as "the Amazing Beast man, impersonating every creature on the evolutionary scale from crow to toad to horse-leech".' Steel's own first lessons about the Establishment view of the French Revolution came from the TV show Blue Peter, which drummed into children the idea that standing up for equality was somehow Not To Be Tolerated. 'I can't quite recall what followed,' he goes on, 'though presumably someone showed you how to make your own guillotine using a shoebox, an elastic band and a Stanley knife.' You doubt he can keep up this sort of stuff for the length of a book, but he does - and what's more he does it without reducing history to farce. A truly entertaining book, and instructive with it. Not to be missed. (Kirkus UK)
OBSERVER
'A great read. Smart, comic non-fiction is clearly the future' --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
See all Product Description
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