Patronising Bastards


Book Description

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!




Patronising Bastards


Book Description

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!




50 People Who Buggered Up Britain


Book Description

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.




Stop Bloody Bossing Me About


Book Description

'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




Fanatics


Book Description

Embracing studies of football fans across Europe, this book tackles questions of power, national and regional identities, and race and racism, highlighting the changing role of fans in the game. Combining new approaches to the study of fan culture with critical assessments of the commercialization of the game, this fascinating book offers a comprehensive and timely examination of the state of European football supporters culture as the game prepares itself for the next millennium. The contributors, all leading figures in sports studies, consider: * whether football remains the peoples game, or if it is now run entirely by and for club owners and directors who have overseen the flotation of clubs on the stock exchange, a new focus on merchandising and the escalation of players salaries * the role of FIFA and UEFA in the struggle for control of world football * manifestations of racism and extreme nationalism in football, from the English medias xenophobic coverage of Euro 96 to the demonisation of Eric Cantona * media representations of national identity in football coverage in Germany, France and Spain * the interplay of national, religious and club identities among fans in England, Scotland, Ireland, Portugal and Scandinavia * the role of the law in regulating football * the future for supporters at a time when watching the match is more likely to mean turning on the television than going to a football ground.




Making Monsters: A Speculative and Classical Anthology


Book Description

We have always made monsters: in art, in myth, in religion; out of clay or bronze, pixels or hybrid flesh; from the stuff of human nightmares; by cursing women with bestial traits. This anthology brings together fiction and accessible academic writing in conversation about monsters and their roles in our lives-and ours in theirs.




Mortal Causes


Book Description

The sixth novel featuring Inspector John Rebus, available for the first time as an e-book and with an exclusive introduction by author Ian Rankin. Inspector John Rebus hates the Edinburgh Festival. He especially hates that last Saturday night. He has spent years on the police force confronting it, avoiding it, and cursing it, but most of the time he still gets caught up in it. Nevertheless, this is an honored tradition of Scotland, and a happy one at that. But amid the blaring noise created by the music, laughter, and toasts of "Slainte" as glasses of whiskey are swilled, another tradition—one older than music, happiness, and drink itself—has traveled to Edinburgh and nested itself in the medieval quarter of Mary King's Close. There, beneath the streets of Edinburgh, Inspector Rebus finds the lifeless body of Billy Cunningham swinging from a butcher's hook and knows that his problems have only begun. When Big Ger Cafferty, the ruthless gangster whose sphere of influence extends well beyond the bars that the Inspector himself put him behind, discovers that Bill, his only son, has been brutally murdered, Rebus finds himself with more motivation than his duty can provide to find Billy's killer. But when the police pathologist reports that the young man was killed by professional hands, Rebus finds himself up against a force that could frighten Big Ger himself.




Somebodies and Nobodies


Book Description

Honest and insightful, this memoir is a revealing picture of our recent past, of sport and poetry, the spirit of New Zealand's south and its distinctive people. This is the story of a typical Dunedin childhood, surrounded by 'nobies' - an extended family of eccentric grandparents and uncles, cousins and neighbours - who made a huge impact on a young mind. It's also the story of a not-so-typical family that was fanatical about sport - cycling, hockey, cricket, golf, fishing - and went on to produce top-ranking sportsmen. It's also the story of the growth of one of New Zealand's most loved poets. It shows three boys who became somebodies, but no better nor worse than the nobodies who inspired them. This is Brian Turner's view of the world: the landscape and people he was surrounded by; the principles he was taught; his sporting achievements; the early development of his brothers; his time moving between jobs as distinct as rabbiting in Central Otago and working in Customs; and his entry into the world of books.




The White Crow


Book Description

April 22, 1945. Hitler sits in his bunker, deep beneath the doomed city of Berlin. He knows death is near. He has soared to glory since he was that strange, eccentric corporal - the "White Crow" - of the First World War trenches. Soon he and his Third Reich will be nothing but dust and ashes. But the fallen Fuhrer is nursing a great secret. He has ensured the Blood of the Fuhrer will live on. One day, the terror of jack-boots will once again ring down the streets of Europe. All it will need to spark the birth of the Fourth Reich will be to find a man with the same vivid blue eyes as the Fuhrer - eyes that alone can open a magical metal box. September 5, 2000. A man with vividly blue eyes is unwittingly on his way to a rendezvous with the Fuhrer's box. .




Simul


Book Description

From Andrew Caldecott, the bestselling author of ROTHERWEIRD, comes the jaw-dropping conclusion of the MOMENTICON duology - an epic adventure like no other! 'Remember Simul' - the last words of a dying man, and the key to mankind's survival. Words which take Morag, Fogg and their friends on a wild ride through caverns and over mountains, into old paintings, to a university unlike any other and up the lethal Tower of No Return. A ride where mythical beasts, legendary monster-hunters and a corrupt establishment lie in wait . . . while the weather-watchers look on and bide their time. It's a race against extinction too . . . for nature herself is bent on vengeance. ------------------------- 'Unpredictable, dramatic and always utterly enthralling' - Reader review 'Intelligent and also fun' - Reader review 'Caldecott once again delivers in spades' - Reader review 'Special and dangerous properties . . . opens a series of trap-doors in the readers' imagination' - Hilary Mantel, Booker prize winning author, on Rotherweird