The Book of Heroic Failures: The Official Handbook of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain (original 1979; edition 1980)

by Stephen Pile, Bill Tidy (Illustrator)

Series: Heroic Failures

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Mentions
460	16	53,834	(3.51)	2
It is difficult to be really bad at something, but the people in this book manage to succeed The book features tales of drivers who can't drive, travellers who get lost all the time and policemen who can't catch criminals.

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Member:	Raven
Title:	The Book of Heroic Failures: The Official Handbook of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain
Authors:	Stephen Pile
Other authors:	Bill Tidy (Illustrator)
Info:	Futura Publications, London (1980), Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 216 pages
Collections:	Your library, Read in 2009 (owned or unowned)
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Tags:	non-fiction, untaggable

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The Book of Heroic Failures: The Official Handbook of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain by Stephen Pile (1979)

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I find this pure unadulterated joy. I bought this while at high school and dipping in to read one or two (or more) entries always bring a smile to my face. (

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Damiella | Aug 18, 2020 |

Hilarious book I read as a kid. (

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awesame | Jul 4, 2020 |

"The book of heroic failures" is, quite simply, one of the funniest books I have ever read. If you're like me and enjoy reading about the complete bugger-ups of other people (and I think you are) you'll piss yourself laughing throughout "The Book of Heroic Failures".

I've always been a fan of spectacular failures so I really enjoyed the many spectacular tales of failures and flops. Who could forget the infamous 1912 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race where neither boat was able to finish (and one rower wandered off at a critical moment to chat to his old chum Boswell)? Or the amateur soccer team from England that accidentally found itself playing against a professional German team (the German fans ended up cheering the English team whenever they went near the ball)?

Over two hundred pages of heroic failures, and almost everyone a gem. (

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MiaCulpa | May 26, 2017 |

LOL. No, seriously, that's my review. It's that funny. (

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Chris_El | Mar 19, 2015 |

A book of funny stories about failure in all aspects of human activity. The stories are funny, but not something I would only read once. (

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LindaLiu | Mar 1, 2015 |

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Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Stephen Pile	—	primary author	all editions	calculated
Tidy, Bill	Illustrator	main author	some editions	confirmed
Ojaharju, Jorma	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

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1979

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Oxford and Cambridge boat race

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Epigraph

If a thing's worth doing, it is worth doing badly. -- G.K. Chesterton

Dedication

To all those who have written terrible books on how to be a success, I dedicate this terrible book on how it's perfectly all right to be incompetent for hours on end, because I am and so is everyone I know.

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Success is overrated.

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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

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Anti-tank dog

MV Argo Merchant

Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain

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It is difficult to be really bad at something, but the people in this book manage to succeed The book features tales of drivers who can't drive, travellers who get lost all the time and policemen who can't catch criminals.

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