Eccentric Lives

The Daily Telegraph Book of 21st Century Obituaries

Eccentric Lives
Andrew M Brown
RRP:
NZ$ 79.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 67.99
Hardback
h234 x 156mm - 256pg
1 Oct 2022 UK
International import eta 10-19 days
9781914414879
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
In the late 1980s the Daily Telegraph transformed the traditionally dry and stolid world of obituaries, ushering in a new way of writing about the dead that was vivid, gently subversive and richly comic. Telegraph obituaries became a byword for entertaining journalism, celebrated for their deadpan tone and sympathetic eye for human quirks and eccentricities. Here is a gallery of the most entertaining of these eccentric lives from the recent past, most of them never before published in book form. They amply demonstrate that in an age of committees and bureaucracy and increasing pressure to conform, eccentrics of all kinds have continued to thrive. From the oddball to the prophet, they have ploughed their own furrow. These miniature biographies are charming, funny, oft en moving, but always compulsively readable.
"It' s well worth dying, if one' s obituary notice then appears in the Daily Telegraph. For Andrew M Brown has with flair and brilliance carried on Hugh Massingberd' s pioneering idea, that what makes up a life, what' s worth recording, aren' t only distinguished deeds, public accolades, but absurdities, even calamity -- certainly silliness and sadness. In these pages the reader finds dandies, divines, sages, lovers, travellers, villains, neglected geniuses -- yet were they eccentrics ? What' s on display are men and women with original minds. If they died in a world where the maverick was no longer trusted or wanted, at least they were born in an era when unorthodoxy was prized, something to be nurtured not shunned. Which is to say this book, funny and loving as it evidently is, already has classic status, historical importance, because the society in which its subjects flourished has rapidly vanished. " - Roger Lewis, author, Seasonal Suicide Notes.
Andrew M Brown was born in 1969 and has been obituaries editor at the Daily Telegraph for nine years. He wrote his first obituary, a stock or advance obit of the actor James Garner, more than 20 years ago. He previously edited the opinion pages of the Sunday Telegraph and has contributed to The Spectator, the Oldie and the Catholic Herald among many other publications. He is married with three children and lives in south London.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781914414879
Published: 1 Oct 2022
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Unicorn Publishing Group
Publisher: Unicorn Publishing Group
Format: Hardback
Height: 234mm
Width: 156mm
Pages: 256

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