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1966 And All That
A History of Modern Britain comprising all the parts you can almost remember including an Unsuitable King, one too many Gathering Storms and a good half-dozen Unmemorable Prime Ministers.
177 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
Craig Brown
63 books126 followersCraig Edward Moncrieff Brown (born 23 May 1957, Hayes, Middlesex) is a British critic and satirist from England, probably best known for his work in British magazine Private Eye.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 12, 2017
The ghost writer of I Reach For The Stars: the autobiography of Barbara Cartland, is back! Craig Brown should be much more famous, and get more recognition than he does. Private Eye, the Telegraph and numerous books - mainly masquerading as other people - he should be better known. Perhaps it's his mousey provincial professor appearance, the long lost son of Auberon Waugh, or maybe it's pretending to be someone else that causes him not to have the recognition that's rightly his. The 'also by' list on the fly verso gives a clue. The Agreeable World of Wallace Arnold, Hug Me While I Weep For I Weep For The World, The Roy Strong Diaries - edited and largely rewritten by Craig Brown, Budgie The Little Helicopter by the Duchess of York with Craig Brown, Imaginary Friends...how can you have missed these seminal works? Perhaps because some of them aren't actully real.
This is 'a history of modern Britain comprising all the parts you can almost remember including an Unsuitable King, one too many Gathering Storms and a good half dozen Unmemorable Prime Ministers' and is of course an updated take on Sellars and Yeatman's classic 1066 And All That. My father had a battered old orange Penguin copy of the latter that he'd bought sometime in the late 50s and carried with him for years. He'd take it out occasionally, hoot a bit to himself and put it away again - along with Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes it's pretty much what tickles his funny bone. Humour dates in an odd way, and rereading S&Y today it just feels a bit antediluvian, like watching an old episode of Dad's Army or an elderly uncle telling mainly unfunny jokes at a family party. Gentle, utterly clean and reliant on two things - dreadful puns and a strong and underpinning knowledge of British history, both of which seem a bit old-fashioned today.
Brown has updated 1066 to 1966 rather neatly. Yes, he apes S&Y's style but it's done with his bat's ear for a coy, camp, arch, faux-naif or self-regarding turn of phrase as best illustrated in The Lost Diaries. Like S&Y it mixes hilariously inaccurate or misheard history in the style of the best D-grade fifth former (there, that dates me), with ludicrous exam papers, that mix the old didactic sort of syllabus with the contemporary fashion for touchy-feely bollocks. Sample:
'Imagine you are the Duchess of Windsor. It is the day after your wedding. You have just unwrapped your present from your new sister-in-law Queen Elizabeth. It is a packet of six paper serviettes. One has already been soiled. Describe how you feel.'
Gemlike. It's almost impossible to think this isn't an actual GCSE question, bar the bit about soiling. Similarly on Hitler:
'Imagine you are Adolf Hitler. It is the morning of 30 April 1945.
(a) How are you feeling? Unburden yourself in no more than 50 words.
(b) Ask yourself, where did it all go wrong? Give examples.
(c) On balance, might you have had better career prospects if you had stuck to being a painter?
(d) Why didn't you make a five point plan?'
You can see bemused, half-educated 16 year olds desperately scrabbling for odd mouse droppings of knowledge their adolescent brains have salted away, bashing everything down in the desperate belief that if they put enough on the paper something will attract a few marks. Like frogspawn - they lay thousands in the hope that one or two will survive. That was my exam technique anyway, and it's made me the man I am today...
Brown catches and gently ridicules not only schoolboy howlers but modern educational political correctness, the Royal Family, earnestness, Margaret Thatcherism (..'spent her childhood in a grocer's shop. Her father gave her a slicing machine to operate and she immediately set to work dividing opinion.'), grands projets such as Concorde and the Milennium Dome and a whole lot more. In the author biog to The Lost Diaries, it states boldy, 'Criag Brown is the youngest and most versatile of the Mitford Sisters.' Hear hear!
This is 'a history of modern Britain comprising all the parts you can almost remember including an Unsuitable King, one too many Gathering Storms and a good half dozen Unmemorable Prime Ministers' and is of course an updated take on Sellars and Yeatman's classic 1066 And All That. My father had a battered old orange Penguin copy of the latter that he'd bought sometime in the late 50s and carried with him for years. He'd take it out occasionally, hoot a bit to himself and put it away again - along with Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes it's pretty much what tickles his funny bone. Humour dates in an odd way, and rereading S&Y today it just feels a bit antediluvian, like watching an old episode of Dad's Army or an elderly uncle telling mainly unfunny jokes at a family party. Gentle, utterly clean and reliant on two things - dreadful puns and a strong and underpinning knowledge of British history, both of which seem a bit old-fashioned today.
Brown has updated 1066 to 1966 rather neatly. Yes, he apes S&Y's style but it's done with his bat's ear for a coy, camp, arch, faux-naif or self-regarding turn of phrase as best illustrated in The Lost Diaries. Like S&Y it mixes hilariously inaccurate or misheard history in the style of the best D-grade fifth former (there, that dates me), with ludicrous exam papers, that mix the old didactic sort of syllabus with the contemporary fashion for touchy-feely bollocks. Sample:
'Imagine you are the Duchess of Windsor. It is the day after your wedding. You have just unwrapped your present from your new sister-in-law Queen Elizabeth. It is a packet of six paper serviettes. One has already been soiled. Describe how you feel.'
Gemlike. It's almost impossible to think this isn't an actual GCSE question, bar the bit about soiling. Similarly on Hitler:
'Imagine you are Adolf Hitler. It is the morning of 30 April 1945.
(a) How are you feeling? Unburden yourself in no more than 50 words.
(b) Ask yourself, where did it all go wrong? Give examples.
(c) On balance, might you have had better career prospects if you had stuck to being a painter?
(d) Why didn't you make a five point plan?'
You can see bemused, half-educated 16 year olds desperately scrabbling for odd mouse droppings of knowledge their adolescent brains have salted away, bashing everything down in the desperate belief that if they put enough on the paper something will attract a few marks. Like frogspawn - they lay thousands in the hope that one or two will survive. That was my exam technique anyway, and it's made me the man I am today...
Brown catches and gently ridicules not only schoolboy howlers but modern educational political correctness, the Royal Family, earnestness, Margaret Thatcherism (..'spent her childhood in a grocer's shop. Her father gave her a slicing machine to operate and she immediately set to work dividing opinion.'), grands projets such as Concorde and the Milennium Dome and a whole lot more. In the author biog to The Lost Diaries, it states boldy, 'Criag Brown is the youngest and most versatile of the Mitford Sisters.' Hear hear!
August 5, 2012
Very funny where I could understand it. Lots of references though that are best understood if you are British. I needed a lot of googling! Though that's not Brown's fault. The book is cleverly written and keeps you on your toes with its puns witticisms and cleverly hidden pokes at British society.
July 7, 2013
'1966 And All That' is a homage to the 1930 classic '1066 and All That', which ends with history coming to a full stop in 1918 with America as Top Nation. Brown takes it through the next nine decades with the same sort of absurdist humour, mixing characters (e.g. King George and his son Lloyd) and garbling events in a work of semi-surrealist nonsense.
I can't exactly say why, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the earlier work or as much as I enjoyed the radio version that was broadcast on Radio 4. It's the sort of humour that needs to be taken in small doses, and the nonsensical word-play seems to work better on radio than on the page.
I can't exactly say why, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the earlier work or as much as I enjoyed the radio version that was broadcast on Radio 4. It's the sort of humour that needs to be taken in small doses, and the nonsensical word-play seems to work better on radio than on the page.
January 25, 2008
What a disappointment! I got this as a retirement present after 37 years of history teaching. The author is named as the '4th Funniest Londoner'. 1066 and All That WAS funny. This was the most unfunny book I have tried to read in eons. Pretentious! Too clever by half!
July 25, 2008
an affectionate homage to the classic Seallr and Yeatman books - not as funny as they are but still some splendid laughs.
September 29, 2008
Sorry - I got bored it with it after about 60 pages and couldn't get the motivation to go on. Too many supposed jokes which were just a play on names and not much else for me.
February 6, 2014
I discovered this book though a radio 4 dramatisation, and loved the programme. I think this is a book that translates better to radio rather than book
April 23, 2015
Gloriously silly fun. In marked contrast to the Gombrich book - you need to know your history a bit to get the many jokes. Doubtless more than a few passed me by.
December 31, 2016
A very funny read...
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews