Bøker av Craig Brown

From the award-winning author of Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four.

A collection of whimsical true encounters between famous and infamous individuals describes the unlikely meetings of Marilyn Monroe with Frank Lloyd Wright, Michael Jackson with Nancy Reagan, and Sigmund Freud with Gustav Mahler.

"Rollicking, irresistible, un-put-downable . . . For anyone . . . who swooned to Netflix's The Crown, this book will be manna from heaven." -Hamish Bowles, Vogue"Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret is a brilliant, eccentric treat." -Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal"I ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice . . . The wisdom of the book, and the artistry, is in how Brown subtly expands his lens from Margaret's misbehavior . . . to those who gawked at her, who huddled around her, pens poised over their diaries, hoping for the show she never denied them." -Parul Sehgal, The New York Times"Brown has done something astonishing: He makes the reader care, even sympathize, with perhaps the last subject worthy of such affection . . . His book is big fun, equal measures insightful and hysterical." -Karen Heller, The Washington PostA witty and profound portrait of the most talked-about English royalShe made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando tongue-tied. She iced out Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was madly in love with her. For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy. Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures. To her friends, she was witty and regal. To her enemies, she was rude and demanding. In her 1950s heyday, she was seen as one of the most glamorous and desirable women in the world. By the time of her death in 2002, she had come to personify disappointment. One friend said he had never known an unhappier woman. The tale of Princess Margaret is Cinderella in reverse: hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. Such an enigmatic and divisive figure demands a reckoning that is far from the usual fare. Combining interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues, and essays, Craig Brown's Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret is a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society.

If pride comes before a fall, so too does greed. When George Jensen discovers his wife Paula?s adultery with the rich and influential Martin Brack, the scene is set for a vengeful campaign of blackmail. Brack soon realises that Jensen will not go away; he must be removed. But there was homework to be done and by its neglect the plan goes disastrously wrong. Jensen is left doubly embittered and very much alive. His response is naked greed, fuelled by unreasoning anger. Both protagonists are facing destruction.In this woeful tale there is sexual dalliance, blackmail, death and mindless retribution. The cruel twist at the story?s heart is beautifully counterbalanced by the fresh breath of innocent hope and a quiet striving for reconciliation enacted by two young children, carrying the episode to a moving and magical conclusion. Theirs is the final distinction and dignity.

In this highly readable book, Dr Brown offers practical suggestions, excercises and ideas to help you: *Confront and release your own negative attributes *Find a balance between your body, mind and spirit *Establish harmony with your environment *Discover your own path to optimum healing and inner peace

From our funniest writer, a portrait of our most talked-about royal

When cars were invented, the US Postal Service said goodbye to animal-powered deliveries forever-or did it? There's one town in the States that still receives their mail by mule! Meet Anthony Paya, who leads a train of mules on a daily three-hour trek down into the Grand Canyon to bring mail to the townspeople of Supai. Full of authentic Western details about Paya's one-of-a-kind job and magnificent workplace, this beautifully illustrated journey will fill readers with wonder and respect for this unique American landscape. Back matter includes further information about the hazards of working this mail route and author-illustrator Craig Brown's journey with the mule train to Supai.

In this work, Craig Brown talks about the thrills and spills of his relentlessly demanding job as the Scottish national football team's manager, taking the reader behind the scenes and into the dressing room with its tensions, decisions and celebrations.

. A Generation of Excellence tells the story of one of the country's most remarkable institutions.

Brown traces how the faculty evolved past its early defining traits of elitism and exclusivity to its current form - a remarkably diverse body with students of all ages, backgrounds, and academic interests.

101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, each 1,001 words long, and with a time span stretching from the 19th century to the 21st.Life is made up of individuals meeting one another. They speak, or don't speak. They get on, or don't get on. They make agreements, which they either hold to or ignore. They laugh, they cry, they are excited, they are indifferent, they share secrets, they say 'How do you do?' Often it is the most fleeting of meetings that, in the fullness of time, turn out to be the most noteworthy.'One on One' examines the curious nature of different types of meeting, from the oddity of meetings with the Royal Family (who start giggling during a recital by TS Eliot) to those often perilous meetings between old and young (Gladstone terrifying the teenage Bertrand Russell) and between young and old (the 23 year old Sarah Miles having her leg squeezed by the nonagenarian Bertrand Russell), and our contemporary random encounters on television (George Galloway meeting Michael Barrymore on Celebrity Big Brother).Ingenious in its construction, witty in its narration, panoramic in its breadth, 'One on One' is a wholly original book.

The Lost Diaries is a wide-ranging anthology of the world's greatest diarists, each of them channelled onto paper through the considerable psychic force that is Craig Brown.Arranged on a day-to-day basis, spread throughout an entire year, these diary extracts form a patchwork quilt of observation, reflection, contemplation and, above all, self-promotion. As the months unfold, different diarists offer their insights on the events that pass: John Prescott on going to Royal Ascot, Nigella Lawson on preparing Christmas lunch, W.G. Sebald on enjoying an ice lolly by the beach, Karl Lagerfeld on the need for an umbrella in Spring.Among over 200 diarists featured are Martin Amis, Jordan, Germaine Greer, The Duchess of Devonshire, President Barack Obama, Philip Roth, HM the Queen, Heather Mills McCartney, Victoria Beckham, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sir Cecil Beaton, John Prescott, Mohamed Fayed, Harold Pinter, Yoko Ono, Barbara Cartland, Jilly Cooper, Christopher Ricks, Jeremy Clarkson, Jeanette Winterson, Sylvia Plath, Keith Richards, Maya Angelou and Frank McCourt.CRAIG BROWN has been writing the Private Eye celebrity diary since 1989. He has also written parodies for many other publications, including The Daily Telegraph, Vanity Fair, The Times and The Guardian. The Lost Diaries is the first time all his greatest parodies have been gathered together in one book. Arranged day-by-day, full of invigorating and sometimes shocking juxtapositions, they constitute a treasure-trove, choc-a-bloc with all the fantasies and illusions of our times.

An awful lot has happened since that bright, fateful May morning in 1997 when New Labour swept to power. Things, we were told, could only get better. Instead, things took a turn for the worse. This book describes Britain during the Tony Years: from Cool Britannia to ASBOs and from Posh and Becks to Charles and Camilla.

Listeners to Radio Four have long reserved a very special place in the hearts for Wallace Arnold. In Welcome to my Worlds! Wallace Arnold takes us behind the scenes of the worlds of politics, high society, the literary life and the wireless, in all of which he continues to play a crucial role.

Craig Brown (no not the Scottish football manager) is the funniest, the most revered and the most prolific humorist we have. This collection of parody, satire, whimsy and wit, includes extracts and articles from Private Eye, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, Vanity Fair, The Mail on Sunday, The Spectator and many more.