Frank Muir

In this magisterial collection, Frank Muir guides the reader on a journey of discovery and delight through five centuries of humorous prose in the English language.Starting in London with William Caxton and a Preface written and printed in 1477, and ending with P. G. Wodehouse whose last novel was published in 1977, the route is meandering: from England to Ireland and Scotland, back to England again, on to America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. There areexamples chosen from humorous fiction, letters, and journalism written by over 200 authors and ranging from medieval jests to the New Yorker and Beachcomber; from Thomas Nashe and Tom Brown's galloping bawdy to Jane Austen and on to Garrison Keillor and Arthur Marshall; from the jokes in SamuelJohnson's Dictionary to Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and his hangover. The great humorous writers such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and P. G. Wodehouse are given a kind of mini-anthology of their own so that the range and versatility of their work can be appreciated.The extracts are embedded in a commentary that sets the writers in their historical context with items of contemporary gossip and anecdotal biography.As tour leader of this enjoyable enterprise, there could be no one better than Frank Muir to entertain, inform, and above all amuse the reader in his own distinctive fashion.

From William Caxton to P.G. Wodehouse : a Conducted Tour

The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose

Eye for an Eye

Hand for a Hand

Joseph Wright

What-a-mess and the Hairy Monster

T. Frank Muir

While investigating the murder of a woman who was discovered in a shallow grave, DCI Andy Gilchrist finds the case taking him closer to the identity of his brother's killer from a hit-and-run case some 35 years earlier, especially when the dental records from an extracted tooth reveal the unthinkable.

Tooth for a Tooth

What-a-mess, the afghan puppy, is always in trouble so that his mother disowns him. He sets out to find what he really is - a bee, a hat, a fish?

What-a-mess

A puppy, called What-a-Mess tries to keep cool in the hot summer drought.

What-a-Mess in Summer

Denis Norden

Stories from My Word!

You Can't Have Your Kayak and Heat it

Photographs and engravings of scenes from Christmases past and selections by Dickens, Beerbohm, Auden, and others augment the author's witty explanations of the origins of Christmas customs and the ways in which they have changed through the years

Christmas Customs & Traditions

Collection of remarks made over the past twenty-seven centuries by the wise, the witty, and the peevish, to which the author has added comments on the time and the circumstances.

An Irreverent and Thoroughly Incomplete Social History of Almost Everything

Stefan Lux

Roman

Der Augenblick der Rache

William Grundwick has a problem. As secretary of the Walpole Club he's duty-bound to arrange whatever function the Events Committee decides is appropriate to celebrate the Club's 250th birthday. It's just that what they have decided upon seems to William almost wholly inappropriate; worse still he's not sure he knows precisely what form such a function should take. And if that isn't bad enough, the whole business is supposed to be a deep secret, so he can't even discuss it with his lovely young wife Milly. Milly has her own problems. Is she going off William? His secretiveness is certainly disturbing. And now the Baroque Trio she runs has lost its viola and continuo player - Catriona has decamped to Los Angeles with a session guitarist called Trev. Torn between the demands of the Events Committee, Milly, and an accountant in a diaphanous sari, spied on by a treacherous underporter with a hotline to the tabloids and pressurized by the chairperson of the Golden Horn Ladies Belly-Dancing Ensemble, Catford, the harrassed William has some appallingly difficult decisions to make. The Walpole Orange, astonishingly, is Frank Muir's first novel. As one might expect from Britain's leading humorist, it is highly imaginative, wickedly witty and utterly irresistible.

The Walpole Orange

For more than 25 years Frank Muir, in partnership with Denis Norden, produced comedy for radio and television. On programmes such as My Word! and My Music his distinctive voice became familiar to millions as he displayed an astonishingly well-stocked mind and a genius for ad libbing and outrageous puns. Later, working at the BBC and then at London Weekend Television, he produced television comedy in the 1960s and 70s. He has written highly successful books for children, and two bestselling anthologies of humour.

The Autobiography of Frank Muir

A Kentish Lad

Nancy C. Muir

What-a-Mess in Winter

SELF HELP BOOKLET FOR GOLFERS. 4 SIMPLE STEPS TO IMPROVE YOUR CHIPPING AND CONFIDENCE AROUND THE GREENS

Frank Muir

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