John O'Farrell

From 55BC to 1945, An Utterly Impartial History of Britain elucidates, informs, but most of all laughs at the seemingly incomprehensible events that combine to make up the story of Great Britain.

Or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge

An Utterly Impartial History of Britain

Re-live the glory and the heartache of England's greatest ever game - and THAT World Cup Final back in 2022. Well now itâe(tm)s 2022 and the discussion is finally over, England have eleven players as good as any of them. The unbeatable national team have reached the final of the Qatar World Cup. But one journalist is convinced there is a scandalous secret behind Englandâe(tm)s incredible form. His lifetimeâe(tm)s dream is to see the Three Lions win the World Cup. But if he pursues and exposes the shocking truth, his beloved England could be sent home in disgrace. Suddenly this is much more than England vs Germany; itâe(tm)s Love vs Duty, itâe(tm)s Truth vs Happiness. The pressure of the penalty shoot-out is nothing compared to this. Thereâe(tm)s Only Two David Beckhams is John Oâe(tm)Farrellâe(tm)s love-letter to football; part-detective story, part-sports memoir, part-satire on the whole corrupt FIFA circus; it just made the final for the funniest football fiction ever written...

There's Only Two David Beckhams

"Michael Adams shares a flat with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer games and occasionally doing a bit of work. And then, when he feels like it, he crosses the river and goes back to his unsuspecting wife and children. For Michael is living a double life - he escapes from the exhausting misery of babies by telling his wife he has to work through the night or travel up north. And while she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in a secret flat, doing all the things that most men with small children can only dream about. He thinks he can have it all, until is deception is inevitably exposed... The Best a Man Can Get is written with the hilarious eye for detail that sent John O'Farrell's first book, Things Can Only Get Better, to the top of the bestseller lists. It is a darkly comic confessional that is at once compelling, revealing and very, very funny."

The Best a Man Can Get

John O'Farrell, author of The Man Who Forgot His Wife, An Utterly Impartial History of Britain and Things Can Only Get Better, turns his comedic genius to the problem of capitalism, encapsulated in a Tube train full of passengers stuck underground - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin Also available in a boxset 'Authors include the masterly John Lanchester, the children of Kids Company, comic John O'Farrell and social geographer Danny Dorling. Ranging from the polemical to the fantastical, the personal to the societal, they offer something for every taste. All experience the city as a cultural phenomenon and notice its nature and its people. Read individually they're delightful small reads, pulled together they offer a particular portrait of a global city' Evening Standard 'Exquisitely diverse' The Times 'Eclectic and broad-minded ... beautifully designed' Tom Cox, Observer 'A fascinating collection with a wide range of styles and themes. The design qualities are excellent, as you might expect from Penguin with a consistent look and feel while allowing distinctive covers for each book. This is a very pleasing set of books' A Common Reader blog 'The contrasts and transitions between books are as stirring as the books themselves ... A multidimensional literary jigsaw' Londonist 'A series of short, sharp, city-based vignettes - some personal, some political and some pictorial ... each inimitable author finds that our city is complicated but ultimately connected, full of wit, and just the right amount of grit' Fabric Magazine 'A collection of beautiful books' Grazia [Praise for John O'Farrell]: 'Comic genius' Mirror 'A consistently humorous writer' Mail on Sunday John O'Farrell is the bestselling author of four novels, including The Man Who Forgot His Wife. He has also written comic non-fiction such as An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, the political memoir, Things Can Only Get Better and three collections of his popular Guardian column.

A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line

Lots of husbands forget things: they forget that their wife had an important meeting that morning; they forget to pick up the dry cleaning; some of them even forget their wedding anniversary. But Vaughan has forgotten he even has a wife. Her name, her face, their history together, everything she has ever told him, everything he has said to her - it has all gone, mysteriously wiped in one catastrophic moment of memory loss. And now he has rediscovered her - only to find out that they are getting divorced. The Man Who Forgot His Wife is the funny, moving and poignant story of a man who has done just that. And who will try anything to turn back the clock and have one last chance to reclaim his life.

The Man who Forgot His Wife

Lots of husbands forget things. They forget that their wives had an important meeting that morning; they forget to pick up the dry cleaning; some of them even forget their wedding anniversary. But Vaughn has forgotten he even has a wife - her name, her face, everything they ever did together - it has all gone, mysteriously wiped in one catastrophic moment of memory loss. And now he has rediscovered her - only to find out that they are getting divorced.

The Man Who Forgot His Wife

May Contain Nuts

Mannen som glömde sin fru

Like bubonic plague and stone cladding, no-one took Margaret Thatcher seriously until it was too late. Her first act as leader was to appear before the cameras and do a V for Victory sign the wrong way round. She was smiling and telling the British people to f*** off at the same time. It was something we would have to get used to.' Things Can Only Get Better is the personal account of a Labour supporter who survived eighteen miserable years of Conservative government. It is the heartbreaking and hilarious confessions of someone who has been actively involved in helping the Labour party lose elections at every level: school candidate: door-to-door canvasser: working for a Labour MP in the House of Commons; standing as a council candidate; and eventually writing jokes for a shadow cabinet minister. Along the way he slowly came to realise that Michael Foot would never be Prime Minister, that vegetable quiche was not as tasty as chicken tikki masala and that the nuclear arms race was never going to be stopped by face painting alone.

Eighteen Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter, 1979-1997

Things Can Only Get Better

'...as the Labour candidate I prepared for every possible question on the local radio Election Phone-In. What I had not prepared for was my mum ringing up to say that she agreed with John O'Farrell. On EVERYTHING.' Where Did We Go Right? is the personal story of one political activist helping Labour progress from its 1997 landslide to the unassailable position it enjoys today. Along the way, he stood for Parliament against Theresa May but failed to step into her shoes; he was dropped from Tony and Cherie's Christmas card list after he revealed he always sent their card on to a friend from the SWP; and he campaigned for a new non-selective inner-city state school, then realised this meant he had to send his kids to a non-selective inner-city state school. The long-awaited sequel to the best-selling Things Can Only Get Better is for everyone who could use a good laugh after Brexit, Boris and Trump. A roller-coaster ride through the last two decades via the very best political jokes (excluding the ones that keep getting elected).

Twenty Confusing Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter

Things Can Only Get Worse?

Following his hugely popular account of the previous 2000 years, John O'Farrell now comes bang up to date with a hilarious modern history asking 'How the hell did we end up here?' An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain informs, elucidates and laughs at all the bizarre events, ridiculous characters and stupid decisions that have shaped Britain's story since 1945; leaving the Twenty-First Century reader feeling fantastically smug for having the benefit of hindsight.

An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain, Or, 60 Years of Making the Same Stupid Mistakes as Always

Isn't it always the way? You wait ages for one purple flour-filled condom and then three come along at once. Of course the correct procedure for a chemical attack in the House of Commons would have been for MPs to remain in the chamber and remove all items of clothing.I'm not sure which is the more horrific vision; anthrax all over London or Nicholas Soames slipping out of his Y-fronts while chatting to a naked Ann Widdecombe. Here at last is the third collection of John O'Farrell's immensely popular Guardian columns - the final part of the trilogy in which he discovers that Margaret Thatcher is actually his mother. Contained within these covers are a hundred funny, satirical essays on subjects as diverse as Man's ascent from the apes and the re-election of George W. Bush.Plus there is a full account of O'Farrell's heroic but slightly less successful attempt to capture his Tory home town for socialism.He claims that identity fraud has got so bad that an audacious impostor using the name A.L. Blair even managed to get himself a Labour Party card by posing a left-wing champion of wealth distribution and civil rights.He asks why a Blackberry isn't compatible with an Apple.And find out why the Queen didn't go to her own son's wedding; 'What happened to that other girl you were seeing?' 'Mother, we got divorced and then she died in a car crash, remember?' 'Well sometimes you have to work at these things dear...'

I Have A Bream

Wielu mężów zapomina o różnych sprawach: zapominają o tym, że ich żona miała tego ranka ważne spotkanie, zapominają odebrać pranie, a niektórzy zapominają nawet o rocznicy ślubu. Vaughan natomiast zapomniał, że w ogóle ma żonę. Jej imię, jej twarz, ich wspólna historia, wszystko, co kiedykolwiek mu powiedziała i cokolwiek on powiedziałem do niej –zniknęło, w tajemniczy sposób wymazane w jednym, katastrofalnym momencie utraty pamięci. Gdy odkrył ją na nowo, dowiedział się, że właśnie się rozwodzą. Mężczyzna, który zapomniał o swojej żonie to zabawna, poruszająca i chwytająca za serce historia mężczyzny, który zrobi wszystko, żeby cofnąć czas i dostać od losu ostatnią szansę.

Mężczyzna, który zapomniał o swojej żonie

A hilarious and touching debut novel in the seriocomic Nick Hornby tradition. Michael Adams is a composer of advertising jingles who shares a bachelor pad with three other guys. He spends his days lying in bed (a minifridge positioned perfectly within reach) and playing trivia games with his underachieving roommates. And when he feels like it, Michael crosses the city and returns home to his unsuspecting wife and two small children. Michael is living a double life, stretching out his wilting salad days with imaginary business trips and fake deadlines while his wife enjoys the exhausting misery of the little ones. It’s the best thing for his marriage, Michael figures. She can care for the new loves of her life as it seems only she knows how, and he can sleep until the afternoon. Can this double life continue indefinitely? In The Best a Man Can Get, best-selling comic novelist John O’Farrell takes readers on a dark romp through the soul of the contemporary male, torn between eternal adolescence and the very real demands of fatherhood. It’s wry, witty, and surprisingly charming. “Sharp-witted slapstick.” —Publishers Weekly

A Novel

This hilarious novel of a helicopter mom and dad is “a near-flawless caricature of 21st-century upper-middle-class parenthood” (Publishers Weekly). Alice never imagined she would end up like this, so anxious after hearing about the dangers of meteorites that she makes her children wear bike helmets in the wading pool. Her husband, David, has taught their four-year-old to list every animal represented in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. But the more they push their children, the more things there are to worry about. It seems no amount of gluten rationing or herbal teas can improve their children’s intellectual development, and as Alice’s eldest child looks set to fail her entrance exam for the exclusive private school on which her parents have pinned all their hopes, Alice decides to take matters into her own hands. With a baseball cap pulled low over her face, Alice shuffles into a hall of two hundred kids and takes the test in place of her daughter, her first exam in twenty years. From one of Britain’s bestselling comic novelists, praised by the New York Times for “a tart narrative voice and a delectably understated way with wisecracks,” May Contain Nuts is a provocative satire of the manic world of today’s hypercompetitive, overprotective families.

A Novel of Extreme Parenting

or Sixty Years of Making the Same Stupid Mistakes as Always

An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain

A doctor in America has just invented a 'sperm sorting machine'. At least that's what he claimed when his receptionist burst into the office to find him doing something peculiar with the Hoover attachment. Apparently the system used for separating the male and female sperm is remarkably simple. A sample is placed in the petri dish with a microscopic pile of household items on a tiny staircase. All the sperm that go straight past without picking anything up are obviously boys. John O'Farrell's first collection of columns GLOBAL VILLAGE IDIOT was a huge success prompting fulsome praise from such major public figures as the Queen Mother, Roy Jenkins and Cardinal Hume. Sadly, since their deaths, their glowing endorsements cannot be officially verified. So here instead is another collection of funny, satirical essays on a hundred and one 21st century subjects. Read how the government plans to introduce 'Santa loans' that will leave school children £10,000 in debt for all the presents that used to be free from Father Christmas. Learn how the EU is being expanded to include Narnia. And did you know that American war planes now have a little sticker on the back saying 'How's my bombing?' with an 0800 number to call if they blow up any Muslim country in a discourteous of aggressive manner . . .

I Blame The Scapegoats

“[A] satire of celebrity culture and the numbing effects of fame” by the international bestselling comedy writer and author of Things Can Only Get Better (Publishers Weekly). It’s a big night at the London Palladium. Jimmy Conway is about to perform his stand-up comedy routine in front of two thousand invited guests and millions more watching the event live on TV. He steps into the spotlights and waits for the applause to die down. He tries to appear confident but he can’t help wondering whether he should have shared his little secret with someone by now. Jimmy has never performed comedy, or anything, before. Ever. How did he get here? After convincing a naive journalist that he is the latest comedy phenomenon, the under-achieving Jimmy bluffs and stumbles his way up the celebrity ladder, discovering as he goes that in their desperation to be associated with the next big thing, nobody has bothered to check his credentials. Quicker than you can say “flavor of the month,” Jimmy Conway becomes a bogus celebrity, winning an award for something he never did, and ultimately fooling the entire celebrity industry. “A wicked farce.” —Daily Express

This Is Your Life

It's a big night at the London Palladium. As Jimmy Conway steps out blinking into the spotlights live on national television, he can't help wondering whether he should have perhaps shared his little secret with someone by now. Jimmy has never done any performing of any sort ever before... Just as 'bogus doctors' are occasionally discovered working in hospitals, Jimmy Conway has become a 'bogus celebrity'; winning an award for something he never did, being photographed in Hello! in someone else's house, and ultimately making a fool of the entire mad and shallow celebrity merry-go-round.

Michael Adams shares a flat with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer games and occasionally doing a bit of work. And then, when he feels like it, he crosses the river and goes back to his unsuspecting wife and children. For Michael is living a double life - he escapes from the exhausting misery of babies by telling his wife he has to work through the night or travel up north. And while she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in a secret flat, doing all the things that most men with small children can only dream about. He thinks he can have it all, until is deception is inevitably exposed... The Best a Man Can Get is written with the hilarious eye for detail that sent John O'Farrell's first book, Things Can Only Get Better, to the top of the bestseller lists. It is a darkly comic confessional that is at once compelling, revealing and very, very funny.

John O'Farrell

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