Product Description

Sometimes facing up to your problems is just not an option. Dixe Wills reveals the ultimate rural, coastal, urban and mountainous getaways for when life gets a bit too much..."Places to Hide" offers a huge range of hiding places throughout Britain, from a discreet corner of the urban jungle of Birmingham to somewhere just off the coast between Talsarnau and Portmeirion. It gives helpful hints on concealment techniques, from crouching to total identity change, and includes up-to-date information on local sources of food, water and camouflage netting. To provide inspiration, Dixe also recounts the experiences of famous hiders such as King Charles II and Lawrence of Arabia, who have proved true the hider's maxim: 'You can run ? and now you can hide.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31458 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Dixe Wills writes a monthly column for culture magazine Third Way and has contributed sections for two books produced by the football magazine When Saturday Comes. A former human rights reporter in Guatemala, he now lives in the relative safety of Bethnal Green.

Customer Reviews

completely addictive
There are lots of so-called 'humorous' writers out there but in the case of many such books (eg. Lynne Truss), the humour wanes pretty quickly and/or becomes repetitive/obvious/forced/generally boring/silly.

Not so Places to Hide, which doesn't pretend to do anything except take itself utterly seriously. The directory-style format of this book doesn't necessarily make for an easy through-read experience - at first it seems it's more of an amusing loo-break pick-up - but the writing is curiously addictive, and once you've started reading some of the entries, you'll find yourself spending hours on the bog (appropriately enough for a hideout book): 'just one more, then I'll get on with the day'.

Dixe Wills has a knack of taking a perfectly ordinary subject and turning it into a batty parallel universe. Forget Irony for Dummies: this is a masterclass in how to get away with the ludicrous by being completely hilarious. In fact, the scenarios he creates are so funny that when someone hammers on the door and asks how long you're going to be, you realise how boring normal life really is.

I defy anyone to read this and not to laugh at least once.

Buy this book. Now!
After the stellar success of the Z to Z of Great Britain, Dixe Wills is back with another humorous guide to our fair isle.

Whether you are a professional hider, enthusiastic amateur or even if you are frankly confused by the whole thing, this book is what you've been waiting for. Where else in modern literature could you come across such linguistic gems as: "Hills - lovely in the wild but far too cumbersome for the average lounge". Wit and hilarity of the highest order.

offbeat book, not as expected
OK it is amusing and irreverent in style but its not the hillarious guide to the UK I was expecting - ie. not a guide to good, off-the-beaten-track places to go in the UK. Quite surreal - def a boy's book of odd facts and eccentricities.