A dreadful book by a dreadful man.
Peter Cook was quite possibly the funniest man who has ever lived. His work on radio, television and `Private Eye' was without exception hysterically amusing.
For reasons that I still do not understand this book is completely unfunny. Go and get a CD or DVD instead.
For reasons that I still do not understand this book is completely unfunny. Go and get a CD or DVD instead.
This is one of the most splendid things that I have ever read. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is full of ideas by which to live, many of which are also highly suitable for printing out and pinning to your office wall. Another reviewer has already quoted my favourite meditation, `Begin each day ...' so I won't repeat it here. Donning my Old Fart's hat I have to say that the world would be an infinitely better place if more people had read this.
This is an atrocious book in every respect. Ackroyd is an atrocious author. If you've read a few old Michael Moorcock novels, which generally pre-date this by about twenty years, then none of the `fascinating, original and inventive explorations of time' that all the critics claim to detect in Ackroyd's work appear to be fascinating, original, or inventive. The characters are lifeless and implausible. The exposition of archaeological practice is cretinous. The plot would have been rejected by H.P. Lovecraft as simply too naff. A colossal waste of time. I still resent having paid for it, but it has to be read so that you can describe its dreadfulness to the witless fops who publicly worship the author.
I remember this as painfully dull, enlivened only by an incident of bestiality. Which was disgusting, but the rest of the book was just snivelling by some woman who had never really achieved anything, and so that sex scene rather stood out. Unremittingly tedious. Except for the bit where the boy bums the cow.