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Michael Bywater

Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost, & Where Did it Go? Hardcover – 28 Oct. 2004

by Michael Bywater (Author)

3.7 40 ratings

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They...go. They vanish. People. Civilizations. Languages. Philosophies. Works of art disappear, species are extinguished, books are lost, cities drown, things once thought immortal suddenly aren't there. Dunwich is drowned, Pompeii buried, Athena's statue gone from the Parthenon. Whole libraries of knowledge, galleries of secrets. Gone. Lost worlds. Little things, too. Five Boys chocolate. Train compartments. Snuff, galoshes, smog. Your mother's perfume. Your father's tobacco The way Paris used to smell. Our culture, our knowledge and all our lives are shadows cast by what went before. We are defined, not by what we have, but by what we have lost along the way. And so, Lost Worlds: a glossary of the missing, a cabinet of absent curiosities. No mere miscellany, it weaves a web of everything we no longer have. Lost Worlds: the book that falls open at every page.

Print length

296 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Granta Books
Publication date

28 Oct. 2004
Dimensions

13.34 x 2.54 x 21.59 cm
ISBN-10

1862077010
ISBN-13

978-1862077010
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Product description

Review

'I can confidently predict that Michael Bywaters Lost Worlds is going to be an enormous popular success.' -- James Delingpole, Literary Review

A magnificent companion...its where stand-up comedy meets sit-down thought...youll be hugely entertained' -- David Flusfeder, Sunday Telegraph

Lost Worlds is a gorgeously written and barking-mad catalogue raisonne of, well, all kinds of stuff that weve lost' -- Tatler

What makes Bywater so good is the exactitude with which he remembers...Its Bywaters intellectual grief that gets me every time' -- Howard Jacobson, Independent

Wonderfully original, entertaining and occasionally tear-jerking miscellany about life, loss and the human condition' -- Val Hennessy, Critics Choice, Daily Mail

About the Author

Michael Bywater is a writer and broadcaster, and writes the Lost World column for the Independent on Sunday. He has written two books, The Chronicles of Bargepole, and Godzone: Over the Outback and Into the Drink. He currently teaches at Cambridge.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Granta Books; First Edition (28 Oct. 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1862077010
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1862077010
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.34 x 2.54 x 21.59 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,215,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,013 in Curiosities, Imponderables & Wonders
- 10,440 in Fiction Anthologies (Books)
- 15,634 in Encyclopaedias (Books)

Customer reviews:
3.7 40 ratings

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3.7 out of 5

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Mr Paul R Stapel

Recommended by a friend.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 20 July 2022

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Book in perfect condition, arrived early. What’s not to like?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 11 November 2013

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I'm a lower middle class man with a reasonable education, born in the 1950's and a bit of a pedantic geek, so I had high hopes for this book which, I thought, would be akin to an up market QI. I was wrong! I didn't hate this book, I just disliked it on several levels.
Firstly, there is no real structure other than an arbitrary alphabetic listing. This is nothing more than a written version of 'Grumpy Old Men' but devoid of any of the charm or humour of the TV version. The whole book is just a series of arbitrary lists, in one form or another, and in one case, the item is just a list of 100 things that don't exist in today's world. While a few of these pique nostalgic interest, it becomes very boring very quickly. I never enjoy reading down long lists.
Secondly, who is this book aimed at? Me, I assume as most of the references will be meaningless to anyone under the age of about 50. Even I (aged 58) was left thinking "so what?" at the end of most items. Of course, I did recognise lots of products from my past but it invoked in me a feeling of "oh yeah" at best.
One of my biggest gripes is the writing style. Michael Bywater is a well educated, experienced, journalist and, as such, he has an expanded vocabulary and erudition beyond the norm. But, my God, doesn't he like to ram that down the reader's throat? I'm a big fan of the novels of Allan Mallinson and, in most of his books, I encounter the occasional word that I haven't come across before. As I have the pedant' s passion for English, I look it up and, in every case, find that it is exactly the best term to use within the context of the sentence. I feel grateful to Mr Mallinson for broadening my vocabulary; I do not feel condescended or demeaned. Not so with Mr Bywater. Here, every item is awkwardly phrased to allow Mr B to use an obscure or esoteric word with a huge sense of "see, I know that word and you didn't!". It is linguistic triumphalist bullying at its worst and left me thinking "smart a**e" rather than "what a clever man" . Most of the items seem to be little more than a thin excuse to allow Mr Bywater to 'go off on one' and rant incoherently. The odd example of this might be amusing, especially in, say, a weekly newspaper column, but it soon becomes annoyingly tiresome here.
My final gripe is only partly to do with the author and is, at least in part, a result of my poor choice in buying this in Kindle format. My Kindle showed me to be less than 60% through when I reached the end. That's because Mr B has taken the current fad for appending footnotes to much of his writing to the extreme. There are footnotes in just about every item and not just one footnote per item either. Oh no, Mr B doesn't constrain himself so; in some items there are up to a dozen footnotes in just that one item. For some items, there is more written in the footnotes than in the item itself. Now, this is just sloppy and pretentious writing as, clearly, much of what is appended in the footnote should have formed part of the item although, curiously, many of the footnotes are more interesting than the item to which they pertain. My big problem was that, in paper format, these footnotes would have appeared close to each item, allowing them to be read contemperaniously but navigating this in Kindle is more difficult. I must admit that the index at the end works quite well, so it's not all bad.
So would I recommend this book to you? No. It is self important, pretentious, rambling drivel that becomes tedious and boring almost before the end of the first page. I have only awarded a second star to recognise the depth of research that seems to have gone into it. There is a series of books from the folk who produce the QI TV programme, all of which are much better than this (there are some good maths based ones too) and, for humorous middle aged ranting, some of Jerremy Clarkson 's short articles take some beating. In fact, there's lots of stuff out there far better than this. I've had more fun writing this review than I had reading the book! So don't waste your money.

3 people found this helpful

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L. Owens

Cunning emotional raids disguised as nostalgia

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 20 November 2013

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Its a cute idea - lost things. The sort of things that defined your youth, the films you watched, the books you read, the little unremarked and unremembered things that have slid unnoticed down the back of the sofa of life, a family photo album of your lost days. And it does that very adeptly. Remember hats? Canford Cliffs? Park Drive cigarettes? You'll probably smile at the recollection. Then he sneaks out the baseball bat and smacks you right across your emotional Achilles Heel. Dog. Mother. The Dead Zone. Believe me - you won't be expecting it. And even Mozart's Little Buttocks (yes, really) won't shake your conviction that this is a genuinely important book. Read it. It's an exercise in lapidary style, deft intellectual brachiation between every literary source you've heard of and many you haven't, and an effective wringing of heart strings that will leave you pondering for days. Read it. At once.

4 people found this helpful

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G.I.Forbes

pointless

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 February 2015

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This is a book of trivia and inconsequentials and it is hard to see how any author could waste his time compiling this silliness.
The author starts with 2 numbers-404 that apparently means not found in computer speak and $107 billion the amount Bush spent on the Iraq war.
These are followed by hundreds of notations arranged in alphabetical order from AAAAA to Zone the dead. A few are interesting but the vast majority meaningless.
Only once before have I thrown a book in the bucket when I finished it but this was the second time

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 2 December 2021

Excellent condition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 23 January 2013

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Ideal to pick up and dip into when you have some time, continues to fascinate. History as it should be taught

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molespit

Didn't get on with it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 22 December 2013

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I just wanted to read about dodos but that's not what this is about. The author is good but I don't actually know what I just read, it flits about all over the place and is like reading the mind of a mental genius

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Fugitive

A constant source of delight. Dazzling!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 20 February 2022

I have read and dipped into this book many many times over the years since it was first published and have never been disappointed nor become bored with it. It is gently coruscating to those of a nostalgic disposition and of a certain age, on a magnificently wide array of disparate yet nevertheless closely connected subject matter. Essentially things that are no more but are recalled from a distance with both fondness and gratitude, as appropriate, at their loss.

Beautifully written with both sympathy or disdain I find that a few pages together with a large scotch make for a wonderfully amusing balm for the soul and a good night’s sleep together with the reassurance that there still exist others of like mind and sentiment.

Quite simply one of my favourite books!

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