Bøger af Simon Hoggart

A host of memories from Simon Hoggart's forty-plus years in journalism. Simon reveals what Alan Clark said about Melvyn Bragg, what really happened at the Lady Chatterley trial, what Cherie Blair said to him and how he riposted, as well as the time John Sergeant drove a flight attendant to a fury, what happened when he mixed a drink for W. H. Auden and the day Enoch Powell met Bill Haley. A Long Lunch is often hilarious, while also being full of wisdom and insight. Simon has long been regarded as one of our sharpest and wittiest commentators. These memories cover his years in Parliament, Northern Ireland, around the world and on Radio 4, where for twelve years he chaired the much-loved News Quiz. From behind the scenes in Parliament, roving across America and bizarre meetings in TV studios, Simon Hoggart entertains, informs and delights.

Read about how John Major learned the English language from his time in Nigeria. There is Tony Blair, with his verb-free sentences which imply everything and promise nothing. Gordon Brown, the grumpiest prime minister of recent years, both Stalin and Mr Bean. And now David Cameron - who really, really hates being drawn with a condom on his head.Let's not forget John Prescott, who can wrestle the English language to the mat and win by two falls to a submission, Michael Fabricant with his hairpiece stolen from the tail of a My Little Pony, Sir Peter Tapsell, a grandee so grand thatwhen he rises to speak, Hansard writers are replaced by a crack team of monks to write up his words in illuminated lettering. Nick Clegg, with his default expression of a man's whose children's puppy is still missing. And of course,the famous 2010 press conference in the garden of Downing Street, a love-in that would have been illegal in 44 American states.This book, the best of Simon Hoggart's political sketchwriting, will have you laughing, chuckling, roaring, sniggering, and sometimes despairing. It is instant history with added jokes.

In 1977 Prime Minister James Callaghan and Liberal leader David Steel struck a constitutional deal, by which the Labour government could survive a vote of no confidence and get its business through Parliament, while the Liberals gained access to the anterooms of power.The Pact, a contemporaneous account of the hatching and workings of the 'Lib-Lab' deal of 1977-8, is an invaluable time-capsule of British politics but also a pointer to its future. Coalition government has oft been scorned in Britain, since - as Alistair Michie and Simon Hoggart note - the main parties regard their opponents chiefly as 'targets off which points may be scored'. But hung parliaments and inter-party deals, as revived in May of 2010, may be back to stay.This new edition of The Pact, in memory of its co-author Simon Hoggart (1946-2014), includes new prefaces by David Steel, Roy Hattersley, and the journalist Stephen Bush.

Possibly the best authoritative work on the world's mysteries. From fire walking to the prophesies of Nostradamus, this new book pares the fiction from many popular theories, and urges us to educate ourselves through critical inquiry. Jeane Dixon claims she predicted the assassination of President Kennedy, and to millions this prediction gives her the credibility to be a top psychic. Yet the media and Dixon's devoted followers dare not question, or even recognize, the many failed predictions she has offered over the years. Nostradamus is so well-known today that many people actually fear the date he predicted for World War III. Yet when his "prophecies" do not come true, the fiction-hungry media and public turn a blind eye. Bizarre Beliefs spans the globe in search of rational and factual explanations for UFO claims, alien abductions, the Bermuda Triangle, crop circles, evidence of a living Elvis Presley, fortune tellers, Nostradamus's writings, spiritualism, astrology, graphology, fire walking, biorhythms, hypnosis, divining, ghosts, the curse of Tutankhamun, the Loch Ness monster, and "shocking" coincidences. This fascinating book of investigative enquiry questions our ability to believe the outrageously unbelievable, and discloses the gullibility of the human mind, which discounts reason for the romance of the absurd. An amusing, informative, and outstandingly well-written account of the world of weird.

Simon Hoggart brings together the funniest and most surreal examples of that bete noire, the Christmas round robin letter, accompanied by his own inimitably funny commentary.