Peter Tinniswood (1936–2003)

Peter Tinniswood has long been a purveyor of a strange sort of Northern humour that veers between the diverse poles of whimsey, gritty reality, fantasy and pure barking madness. His cricketing tales from 'The Brigadier' may lack northern grit but are just as funny - and as barking.

What can you say about the tale of von Himmelweit, the only Zeppelin captain to take up a career in first-class county cricket? "No-one ever knew his Christian name. But then again, I don't suppose he was the sort show more of man to have one." Or the MCC's Test against a Pygmy XI? Or Queen Victoria's cricketing career?

Inspired madness. show less

A quick bit of fun is how I'd describe this little book. Coming off a high from a book I didn't want to finish I needed a special sort of book as a followup and here I had the perfect choice! Mort is a garrulous old sod who loves to reminisce about the past, when everything was bigger and better. Give him an attentive audience and he's away, especially if he also has a 'pint of the best' in his hand. His long-suffering nephew Carter has a week off work and this dynamic duo spend the time show more driving around the countryside of Northern England. The story had me chuckling over Mort's bigoted reflections on life and the righteousness of his own opinions. Uncle Mort is the sort of man that most would have a love/hate relationship with and we don't meet many of his ilk anymore these days....which is possibly a pity :) show less

Very funny in parts, some great turns of phrase e.g. white as an okapi's elbow, but the story is bizarre, some kind of fast moving macabre farce full of sex, gruesome murders, war, death, dictatorship and more sex. It rattles along which is good because it is quite long and in my case involved some skipping.

The late Peter Tinniswood's first novel about the Brandon family is nothing like the BBC sitcom 'I Didn't Know You Cared' which was somewhat loosely based on it (by Tinniswood himself). And I'm not surprised. Carter Brandon's internal conversations with the baby Daniel, and the stange powers the child seems to have, are very surreal and strangely disturbing. The BBC would never have understood it (and I'm not sure I do, either). This part of the story is very much at odds with the rest, a show more comic kitchen-sink family drama set in a thinly disguised Sheffield. Tinniswood had a wonderful ear for dialogue, and a nice line in descriptive prose, but I'm not sure the Daniel business works, or what it's supposed to mean. Very odd. Aye, well, m'm. show less