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Filthy English
Bestial pornographic movies and aniseed addiction; hallucinogenic mushrooms and incest; a homosexual crime passionnel. As you would expect from Jonathan Meades, his disturbing collection of short stories introduces us to characters who lurk and linger around the back alleys of the mind.
- GenresShort Stories
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
95 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Meades
25 books53 followersJonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947) is a writer, food journalist, essayist and film-maker. Meades has written and performed in more than 50 television shows on predominantly topographical subjects. His books include three works of fiction and several anthologies.
Meades is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Patron of the British Humanist Association.
Meades was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and educated at King's College, Taunton, which he described as "a dim, muscular Christian boot camp". He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1968.
Meades wrote reviews and articles for The Times for many years, and was specifically its restaurant critic from 1986 to 2001. He was voted Best Food Journalist in the 1999 Glenfiddich Awards. Having given up writing about English cuisine in 2001 after being The Times' restaurant critic for fifteen years, Meades estimated, in an interview with Restaurant magazine, that he had put on 5 lb a year during his reviewing period, which works out around an ounce per restaurant. By his own statement in the series Meades Eats, after being pronounced 'morbidly obese' he subsequently managed to lose a third of his body weight over the course of a year.
His first collection of stories Filthy English was followed by Pompey (1993), which was widely praised and compared to Sterne, Scarfe, Steadman, Dickens and Joyce amongst other great stylists.
Meades' An Encyclopaedia of Myself was published in May 2014 by Fourth Estate. It was long-listed for that year's Samuel Johnson Prize and won Best Memoir in the Spear's Book Awards 2014. Roger Lewis of the Financial Times said of the work that "If this book is thought of less as a memoir than as a symphonic poem about post-war England and Englishness – well, then it is a masterpiece."
Meades's book Museum Without Walls was published on the Unbound crowd-funding site, in both print and e-book editions.
Meades is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Patron of the British Humanist Association.
Meades was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, and educated at King's College, Taunton, which he described as "a dim, muscular Christian boot camp". He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1968.
Meades wrote reviews and articles for The Times for many years, and was specifically its restaurant critic from 1986 to 2001. He was voted Best Food Journalist in the 1999 Glenfiddich Awards. Having given up writing about English cuisine in 2001 after being The Times' restaurant critic for fifteen years, Meades estimated, in an interview with Restaurant magazine, that he had put on 5 lb a year during his reviewing period, which works out around an ounce per restaurant. By his own statement in the series Meades Eats, after being pronounced 'morbidly obese' he subsequently managed to lose a third of his body weight over the course of a year.
His first collection of stories Filthy English was followed by Pompey (1993), which was widely praised and compared to Sterne, Scarfe, Steadman, Dickens and Joyce amongst other great stylists.
Meades' An Encyclopaedia of Myself was published in May 2014 by Fourth Estate. It was long-listed for that year's Samuel Johnson Prize and won Best Memoir in the Spear's Book Awards 2014. Roger Lewis of the Financial Times said of the work that "If this book is thought of less as a memoir than as a symphonic poem about post-war England and Englishness – well, then it is a masterpiece."
Meades's book Museum Without Walls was published on the Unbound crowd-funding site, in both print and e-book editions.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 1, 2025
Having read what others on GR have said I will begin by saying that this collection of stories is a brilliant evisceration of all the pompous vacuity at the heart of British culture and life by an author who neither gives quarter, nor takes prisoners, nor makes any allowance for those who desire an easy read. I have read many collections of 'transgressive' literature and I can tell you none of the various 'shocking' authors of the 90's or later in the USA or UK with their navel gazing tales of excrement playing in drug dens and sexual excess can hold a candle to Meades. He is brilliant, funny and as satiric as Swift in his 'A Modest Proposal'. Meades is funny, but can also conjure up tales that can break your heart such as 'Spring and Fall' were the corruption/destruction of a child through actions utterly selfish but without evil intent is perhaps one of the saddest and most true stories I have ever read.
As most of the reviews I have read on GR come from non English readers, many of whom I believe are from the USA, I would warn readers that while not in anyway a parochial writer Meades demolishes so many taboos and sacred totem's of English life with an incredibly wide selection of cultural references that he may be hard to follow. But if you do and with Goggle and Wikipedia it is so easy to access information on his obscure references that I urge you to preserve. He is a brilliant cultural commentator, far more interesting then Christopher Hitchens.
One final warning for those whose editions may contain fulsome praise from Stephen Fry please don't let his fatuity put you off. Fry has managed to convince people he is very clever while those of us who have read any of his rambling know that he is not. If you want writing like Fry's then this book will disappoint. It is far, far better has much more to say, says it in a challenging way and will leave you staggered at why you have wasted your time reading ersatz dross by people like Irving Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk instead of diving into a a dish of caviar such as Meades writing.
As most of the reviews I have read on GR come from non English readers, many of whom I believe are from the USA, I would warn readers that while not in anyway a parochial writer Meades demolishes so many taboos and sacred totem's of English life with an incredibly wide selection of cultural references that he may be hard to follow. But if you do and with Goggle and Wikipedia it is so easy to access information on his obscure references that I urge you to preserve. He is a brilliant cultural commentator, far more interesting then Christopher Hitchens.
One final warning for those whose editions may contain fulsome praise from Stephen Fry please don't let his fatuity put you off. Fry has managed to convince people he is very clever while those of us who have read any of his rambling know that he is not. If you want writing like Fry's then this book will disappoint. It is far, far better has much more to say, says it in a challenging way and will leave you staggered at why you have wasted your time reading ersatz dross by people like Irving Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk instead of diving into a a dish of caviar such as Meades writing.
July 2, 2018
More dark comedy and human degradation as Meades weaves tales of those living on the margins in the 1940s, 50s up to the start of the drug era 60s that would change everything within the margins, including the economy there. We get the marvellous title story about pro-Nazi sympathies within Britain and the domestic violence it unleashes. We have another story about a rich childless couple, de facto adopting a kid by giving him everything he could possibly want in the way of toys. We have an accidental crime of passion among gay sex tourists in Morocco, a realm deliciously described and recreated by Meades. And a story about suburban Surrey becoming penetrated by the criminal classes as they move from their ghettoes into nice houses and there goes the neighbourhood...
The South East of England comes in for a pasting, Southampton, the New Forest and Portland, to add to Meades assault on the area in his novel "Pompey". I get the sense that these places are about 30 years behind the clock, so it's absolutely right that they are both set in the 50s and yet are written by Meades in the 1980s.
And finally there is a story from the viewpoint of a dog who stars in human-canine pornography, kept sweet by being addicted to aniseed. This is the second dog pornography story I've read this year (Curtis White's "Requiem" was the other). Think I've had enough of that particular trope now.
The South East of England comes in for a pasting, Southampton, the New Forest and Portland, to add to Meades assault on the area in his novel "Pompey". I get the sense that these places are about 30 years behind the clock, so it's absolutely right that they are both set in the 50s and yet are written by Meades in the 1980s.
And finally there is a story from the viewpoint of a dog who stars in human-canine pornography, kept sweet by being addicted to aniseed. This is the second dog pornography story I've read this year (Curtis White's "Requiem" was the other). Think I've had enough of that particular trope now.
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May 23, 2020
This has been a helluv'an introduction to Jonathan Meades. I'm so glad Paladin mentioned it in their copy of Georges Bataille's Blue of Noon that I read. It's slightly surreal to think this was released in the 1980s, for me it feels like an earlier version of a British Chuck Palahniuk, which should be Irvine Welsh, but it's earlier than Welsh and is of a Stephen Fry-esque articulation. A strange piece for me or maybe it's just that I haven't dipped my toes enough in home-waters.
More, please, so much more.
More, please, so much more.
April 7, 2014
Having only understood every third word or so did not detract from the fact that Meades' head should probably be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. A collection of rather disturbing tales centred around the part of England where I happen to live. I will now think twice before entering the New Forest alone.....
July 13, 2012
"No one understands England better than Meades" Stephen Fry
It's a glowing endorsement really but perhaps I should have known better, Stephen Fry is famous for being ridiculously intelligent by 21st Century standards and this collection of bizarre short stories seems to have been pitched somewhat over my head.
Perhaps it is me that is at fault and my mind that needs examining though, when I read the back of a book and it promises bestial pornographic movies, incest and a homosexual crime passionnel I sort of expect something akin to an English Knockemstiff.
Meades is the type of writer who loves words, relishes their use infact, and I have no issue with this in general but he is relentless in it, using paragraphs to discuss a words synonyms as opposed to you know plot and story and other such entertainments. There's no doubt that the way he uses these discussions to extract an anecdote from the 20 pages or so each one is allocated requires talent and skill etc it's just not something that I took any real enjoyment from.
It's a glowing endorsement really but perhaps I should have known better, Stephen Fry is famous for being ridiculously intelligent by 21st Century standards and this collection of bizarre short stories seems to have been pitched somewhat over my head.
Perhaps it is me that is at fault and my mind that needs examining though, when I read the back of a book and it promises bestial pornographic movies, incest and a homosexual crime passionnel I sort of expect something akin to an English Knockemstiff.
Meades is the type of writer who loves words, relishes their use infact, and I have no issue with this in general but he is relentless in it, using paragraphs to discuss a words synonyms as opposed to you know plot and story and other such entertainments. There's no doubt that the way he uses these discussions to extract an anecdote from the 20 pages or so each one is allocated requires talent and skill etc it's just not something that I took any real enjoyment from.
August 15, 2011
I found this book last spring when I was at Shakepeare & Co in Paris. I decided I HAD to get something while I was there and this was 6€ and it has an endorsement from Stephen Fry on it, so I figured it must be good. It's taken me forever to get through it (too many other books to read, y'know) but so far, it's been quite good.
December 11, 2017
entertaining, crazy, and, indeed, filthy - a treasure trove of new vocabulary you never expected to find in the most unlikely of combinations, e.g. this priceless little vignette from a rural pub:
"A normally well-behaved dog called Dusty found it too much to bear and joined in the jollity, jumping hither and tither, leaving poochy paw marks on coats fashioned from fellow quadrupeds, causing tables to lurch and drinks to spill. No one minded much save the couple who owned the creature, a cravat and a headscarf who threatened him with expulsion to the car outside (period colour requires a Healey 3000). The dog was disobedient, almost tumbled into the open fire at one point.
Len caught headscarf's eye, she looked embarassed and exasperated. Dusty did another leap, more circus than shire (a further source of embarrassment) and a Tattersall check shirt muttered something like 'ruddy hound'. The next time that Dusty skidded to a halt by him, melting icicles of slobber dripping on to the floor, Len acted. He punched Dusty on the side of the head. Not a playfull cuff but a proper Hackney sandwich. The dog keeled over, very surprised, made an eldritch whimper and lay wriggling like a decapitated eel. The silence was loud as the clash of tweeds in the bar."
"A normally well-behaved dog called Dusty found it too much to bear and joined in the jollity, jumping hither and tither, leaving poochy paw marks on coats fashioned from fellow quadrupeds, causing tables to lurch and drinks to spill. No one minded much save the couple who owned the creature, a cravat and a headscarf who threatened him with expulsion to the car outside (period colour requires a Healey 3000). The dog was disobedient, almost tumbled into the open fire at one point.
Len caught headscarf's eye, she looked embarassed and exasperated. Dusty did another leap, more circus than shire (a further source of embarrassment) and a Tattersall check shirt muttered something like 'ruddy hound'. The next time that Dusty skidded to a halt by him, melting icicles of slobber dripping on to the floor, Len acted. He punched Dusty on the side of the head. Not a playfull cuff but a proper Hackney sandwich. The dog keeled over, very surprised, made an eldritch whimper and lay wriggling like a decapitated eel. The silence was loud as the clash of tweeds in the bar."
September 29, 2020
You can't put a good book down. You can't pick a bad book back up. A great book like this enjoins such a visceral reaction you find yourself repeatedly putting it down out of shock only to pick it straight back up. If you're familiar with Meades' television work, this book might come as something of a shock. What seems irreverence in Abroad in Britain becomes excoriation in his fiction.
In these short stories Meades' keen sense of the grotesque springs fully formed from the page more abruptly than in his longer form fiction. He imagines, or revisits, a world seemingly conjured from his childhood memories of the places and possibly people he writes about. Revulsion is an inevitable reaction.
In these short stories Meades' keen sense of the grotesque springs fully formed from the page more abruptly than in his longer form fiction. He imagines, or revisits, a world seemingly conjured from his childhood memories of the places and possibly people he writes about. Revulsion is an inevitable reaction.
February 20, 2025
A short book of short stories. Comedic and full of black humour. Definitely trawling the dark underbelly of society. If you like pornography, incest and child murder this is for you.
Grim and at times surreal it is nevertheless enjoyable.
Grim and at times surreal it is nevertheless enjoyable.
Read
July 8, 2025DNF
Don’t know how this came to be on my book shelf; read the first three words of the blurb and noped out of there
Don’t know how this came to be on my book shelf; read the first three words of the blurb and noped out of there
Read
April 29, 2014A collection of short stories, the best of which is the first one in the book entitled Fur and Skin. It stands out because it is a bit different and well.. I like a bit different... the rest seem to be sort of oh well a bit on the dull side.
I guess when Stephen Fry wrote 'No one understands England better than Meades' he sort of gave up on England and started his world wide tour which seems to every now and then include a few seconds of tweetering from his iphone in england.
I guess when Stephen Fry wrote 'No one understands England better than Meades' he sort of gave up on England and started his world wide tour which seems to every now and then include a few seconds of tweetering from his iphone in england.
May 3, 2013
I'm not sure whether I liked it, or whether it was OK. It's that kind of book. Rather like a meal consisting of pan-fried foie gras with raspberry reduction, followed by confit of duck with cherry reduction, and a crepe suzette to close. All delicious in their way, but in one evening? Naaaah.
Scurrilous and occasionally funny, but never funny ENOUGH, in my view.
Scurrilous and occasionally funny, but never funny ENOUGH, in my view.
July 13, 2012
Vile but well written, draws you in , couldn't stop reading, last story a murder story, with a mystery element SPOILER - the murderer has to be (I've forgotten how to do the spoiler hide thing so won't say) but I was up all night trying to work out who, what this ** ** is, an anagram? Bastard author. (1986 notebook)
May 23, 2013
I didn't reach the satisfaction of having read an amazingly good story, all in all. Spring and Fall had fantastic bits; Fur and Skin was enjoyable overall; Filthy English was well done in places (as, I suppose, all of them were; but the rest impressed me less, perhaps). It's a high star rating because of the use of language, the vivid imagery and the fantastic bits, here and there.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews