Fish Show (Penguin) 1997
Fish Show is a gastronomic fantasy about a bored restaurant critic who, to please his facile and trendy new boss, begins writing about ever-more exotic restaurants which don’t actually exist. Or do they….?
This book was my first novel and reads like one. It has ingenu charm, some good jokes, and the weird restaurant set pieces are great. With a bit of tinkering it would make the most fantastic movie. But the ending doesn’t quite hang together and the main character Giles Fripp is a bit of a prat. Mind you, you could say that about pretty much all my heroes – all of whom are, of course, based on me.
You will like if: you’re a foodie; you like restaurants; you enjoy quirky wish-fulfilment fantasies. Some people LOVE this book and think it’s the best I’ve ever done.
You will dislike if: you’re bothered by crap endings; you don’t like fattish, slightly pompous, irritating narrators.
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Fin (Picador) 2000
FIN is an autobiographical novel about a man whose greatest fear is that one day he will be eaten by a great white shark. At the end of the book, he confronts that fear.
I suppose you could call this a “cult novel”: ie it sold bugger all but the people who love it REALLY love it. It came out of a conversation I had with my friend Tim Rostron when I was casting around trying to decide what book to write next. “Write about the things that most interest you”, he said. So I constructed a book about drugs, shark fear and gardening. Then I cut out the gardening because it was too much.
You will like if: you’re scared of being eaten by a shark; you enjoy reading riffs and horror stories about sharks (the ones in Fin really are first class); you enjoy grimey – but nonetheless wrily comical – detail about recreational drug use, male sex fantasies, masturbation and toenail-clipping; you are into obscure late Nineties indie music. Girls, especially, seem to love this book because it shows them how men REALLY think. It’s much more honest than, say, Nick Hornby.
You will dislike if: you really care about plots (there is one, but only just); you dislike raw honesty; you are left wing. Personally I think the only major flaw is the flouncing gay character, whom I introduced mainly to show that even though I’m jolly right wing I’m quite endearingly liberal on social issues. But I think he just comes across as mawkish. Also I’ve gone right off the man I based him on, who I now realise is a pompous tit.
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Thinly Disguised Autobiography (Picador) 2003
Thinly Disguised Autobiography is a thinly disguised autobiographical account of my life from the time I went up to Oxford in 1984 through to my first few years working as a journalist in what was left of Fleet Street, culminating in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.
In some ways this is the best book I have ever written and the best I will write. It is a masterpiece. Knowing it’s a masterpiece is why I came down very hard at the time of some of sniping critics who just didn’t get this – eg Toby Young – either because they were too stupid or jealous. Read it yourself and you’ll understand.
You will like if: you’ve been to or are going to go to university (especially if it’s Oxford or Cambridge); you want to read the best set-piece about Ecstasy in literature, and one of the best about LSD; you’re into what literary ponces like to call “searing honesty”; you want to really get inside a man’s head (see also Fin); you’re interested in life, the meaning of life and the possibility it has no meaning. Oh sod it, just read it. It’s a blooming work of genius.
You will dislike if: you’re stupid; you’re chippy; you have no taste. What bothered Toby, I seem to remember, is that it didn’t have the right kind of Oprah-style – “hero learns from his mistake and grows” – narrative arc. But I don’t think life’s like that. It’s much more like this book. You could say the plot is thin, I suppose. I prefer to call it “episodic”.
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Coward On The Beach (Bloomsbury) 2007
Coward On The Beach is the first in the WWII adventures of Dick Coward, upper class reluctant hero with the Flashman-like knack of appearing in every major military engagement of his lifetime. Here Dick finds himself joining 47 RM Commando in the D-Day landings, fighting through 12 miles of enemy territory, outnumbered, outgunned, to capture the strategically vital Normandy town of Port-En-Bessin.
A new departure for me, military fiction, but not an unexpected one. I live, breathe, eat, sleep World War II – I watch documentaries about it, read books about it, I’ve even done a bit of re-enacting – and my idea of heaven is spending time in the company of the old boys who were there at the sharp end. So really, this is a case of my turning a hobby into a career.
There will be at least 10 books in the Dick Coward series, covering intrepid Dick’s adventures as an RAF fighter pilot, his time in the Western Desert, his unlikely stint on the Eastern Front fighting for his survival with a German machine gun truppe, and so on. The great thing about World War II is that there was so much of it and in such a rich variety of locations, offering so many possibilities for strange and terrifying adventures for our noble hero.
Dick’s not a coward, by the way. That’s just his surname. He’s like you or I would probably be in a war: ie, not exactly desperate to die, but even more scared of being shown up as “lacking moral fibre” among his mates. Dick also happens to have an antiquated concept of “noblesse oblige”, which his cynical, hardbitten, WW1 veteran sidekick (Dick’s ex-riding teacher, and head groom on the estate) Sergeant Tom Price strives perpetually to knock out of him.
You will like if: you’re into World War II, obviously: it’s all very well-researched and there are lots of fascinating footnotes; you like a ripping yarn involving the blackest of black humour, appalling carnage, terror, mayhem, supreme acts of heroism and unlikely scrapes. This is how it was: I get letters from veterans saying: “How on earth did you know?”
You will dislike if: you’re really, utterly, definitely not into World War II. (But even then, I’d say there’s a lot you will like. The comical back story, for example. The love interest involving the flighty Gina.); you’re expecting Flashman. Dick Coward – I repeat – is not Flashman. He is a decent man, not a cad. He doesn’t get as much sex.
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Coward at the Bridge (Simon and Schuster) June 2009
Coward At The Bridge continues the adventures of Dick Coward and Tom Price, this time at Operation Market Garden. This time the pressure is really on for Dick to win a VC. Otherwise the family estate Great Meresby will go to his terrible twin brother James. But how can he possibly win a VC when it’s quite clear that this operation is going to be such a pushover.
Market Garden was quite possibly the most exciting operation of World War II involving acts of quite astonishing heroism both at Arnhem Bridge (and neighbouring Oosterbeek) and also Nijmegen where the US airborne troops of 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment paddled across the River Waal under heavy fire in a bloody action nicknamed Little Omaha. Dick, of course, is in the thick of it all.
You will like if: you liked Coward At The Bridge: this sequel is funnier, darker, weirder, more gripping.
You will dislike if: you don’t get this kind of thing at all.
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How to be right (Headline) 1997
How To Be Right is an A to Z of the zillions of things wrong with politically correct Britain after twelve years under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. It’s the perfect downstairs loo book with entries on all your favourite subjects: The French; Non-Competitive Sports Days; Multiculturalism; Ethnic Monitoring; etc.
The shortest entry is on former Prime Minister Ted Heath. It consists of one, four-letter word, beginning with “c” and ending in “t”.
“Funnier than Clarkson” said one critic. And I agree, obviously, though it hasn’t nearly had the sales to match. Not sure why. Perhaps people weren’t sure whether I meant it or not. (I do: every word, except where I’m deploying weapons-grade sarcasm, obviously). Perhaps I’m just too right-wing for a culture which has been brainwashed into thinking that collectivism, progressive values, PC etc are the best way of making society kinder and fairer. Perhaps by calling it How To Be Right I alienated all those libertarian lefties out there – the boys and girls of Spiked Online and the Institute of Ideas, eg – who share my views but don’t consider themselves right wing. Dunno. All I do know is that it’s a great book, funny because it’s true.
You will like if: you’re properly, soundly right-wing; you’re left wing but believe in Enlightenment principles of empiricism and liberty; you have a sense of humour.
You will hate it if: you’re a whining, humourless, self-hating left-liberal who can’t accept the truth about the world.
You will be confused by it if: you’re one of those “Compassionate Conservatives”, (or RINO Republicans) who is not totally with the programme. Conservatives who believe in man-made global warming, for example: you’ll disagree with this book.
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Welcome to Obamaland: I’ve seen your future and it doesn’t work (Regnery) 2009
A strong contender for the best book I’ve written: funny, passionate, free-wheelingly anecdotal, charmingly conversational, witty, wise and oh so very true. Ostensibly it’s about the worrying similarities between snake-oil-salesman Tony Blair and his Mk II version in the US presidency Barack Hussein Obama. Really though, it’s about much more than that: this may well be the most brilliant apologia for conservatism since PJ O’Rourke’s Republican Party Reptile.
Yeah, I know: immodest but I just can’t help it. Seriously, when I read Obamaland I feel it’s just too good for me to have written it. It flows so well. (I wrote it very fast, so maybe that helped).
Chapters include: Barbecue The Polar Bears; Never Trust A Hippie; Destructive Diversity; The Great White Liberal Death Wish.
It warns of the perils of free universal healthcare; the bunny-huggers who seek to stop us enjoying our inalienable rights to go hunting (either on horseback or with guns); the stupidity of left-liberals (whose frontal lobes have not properly formed); the ruination of our culture through relativism and progressive education; the deceit, lies – and lunatic expense to the taxpayer – of the Anthropogenic Global Warming industry.
You will like it if: you are a true Conservative; you are intelligent; you have a sense of humour.
You will hate it if: you are a left-liberal; you are stupid; you have no sense of humour