Product Description

This is a diary packed with famous names and extraordinary stories.  It is also rich in incidental detail and wonderful observation, providing both a compelling record of five remarkable decades and a revealing, often hilarious and sometimes moving account of Gyles Brandreth's unusual life as a child living in London in the swinging sixties, as a jumper-wearing TV presenter, as an MP and government whip, and as a royal biographer who has enjoyed unique access to the Queen and her family. Something Sensational to Read on the Train takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride from the era of Dixon of Dock Green to the age of The X Factor, from the end of the farthing to the arrival of the euro, from the Britain of Harold Macmillan and the Notting Hill race riots to the world of Barack Obama and Lewis Hamilton. With a cast list that runs from Richard Nixon and Richard Branson to Gordon Brown and David Cameron and includes princes, presidents and pop stars, as well as three archbishops and any number of actresses this is a book for anyone interested in contemporary history, politics and entertainment, royalty, gossip and life itself.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1521 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-29
• Released on: 2009-10-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 720 pages

Review
The deliciously indiscreet diaries of a society insider with a wicked (and shameless) sense of fun...packed with famous names and wildly indiscreet stories --Daily Mail

Full of tales and catty asides about royals and celebrities --Sunday Times

Review

'Uproarious memoirs'

(Daily Mail )

'The deliciously indiscreet diaries of a society insider with a wicked (and shameless) sense of fun...packed with famous names and wildly indiscreet stories'

 

(Daily Mail )

‘Gyles Brandreth is the ultimate insider. In this year’s most colourful diaries, he shares his secrets’ (Daily Mail )

Praise for Gyles Brandreth:

(--- )

‘Searingly honest, wildly indiscreet, and incredibly funny’

(Daily Mail )

‘A touching access to the secrets of the human heart’

(The Times )

‘A fine and sympathetic writer’

(Times Literary Supplement )

‘Brilliant’

(Daily Telegraph )

‘Brilliant’

(Spectator )

'Wonderfully sharp....there is something very potent beneath the froth, and a bullet-proof vest beneath the novelty jumper’ 

(Mail on Sunday )

'He’s a warmer and more guileless version of Boris Johnson, a smarter and less crooked version of Jeffery Archer, a cuddlier and less punk-rock version of Bungle from Rainbow... he merits the backhanded compliment ‘impossible to dislike’. He is happy and he is successful. He earned the latter. The former seems to be temperamental.'

(The Spectator )

‘full of tales and catty asides about royals and celebrities’

(Sunday Times )

‘Brandreth has enjoyed unique access to everyone from prime ministers and royalty to pop stars and actors. For more than 50 years he has faithfully recorded every encounter, every secret and wild indiscretion, in his diary. Something Sensational to Read in the Train is a rollercoaster ride through what Gyles happily admits has been, at times, a ridiculous life’

(Daily Mail )

'Really rather charming'

(The Herald )

About the Author
Gyles Brandreth is a writer, performer, former MP and government whip whose career has ranged from hosting Have I Got News For You to starring in his own award-winning musical revue in London s West End. Currently a reporter with The One Show on BBC1 and a regular on Radio 4 s Just a Minute, his acclaimed Victorian detective stories The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries are now being published in nineteen countries around the world.

---

Customer Reviews

More than matches the title!
This is Gyles Brandreth's diaries from 1950 to the year 2000. It begins with his surprisingly racy childhood and ends after the 1997 election defeat. With so many years covered there is plenty to get your teeth into and its a great review of the last half of the 20th Century.

I hugely enjoyed this book. Its effectively a collection of anecdotes from a man who has been surprisingly deeply involved with a number of worlds - theatre, writing and politics. There are insights and character sketches aplenty from each of these arenas - so if you have any interest in people from Geilgud to Major its worth getting. The writing is clear and its well footnoted so that references are always explained and context for the personal in the wider historical is given.

Also Sensational to Read in Bed!
This is one of the most consistently entertaining books that I've encountered in a very long time. Although it's a chronological romp through the author's real-life adventures, it reads like great fiction. The experiences are related in a conversational and almost alarmingly candid style. If you can grasp the concept of an up-market Jack Kerouac, that will give you something of an idea of what to expect. Bits of it are quite disgracefully hilarious, and I had to be careful not to disturb the neighbours with eruptions of laughter during my late night reading sessions.

Better than sensational
Gyles Brandreth's latest book, "Something Sensational to Read in the Train: The Diary of A Lifetime" is funny, touching, and intensely readable. The section on his career as an MP, taken from "Breaking the Code", his Westminster diaries, is the best account available of how Parliament really works. But that's just one part of Brandreth's varied life. Like Wagner, he really can do most of the things he thinks he can, but unlike Wagner he comes across as an amiable optimist, who is never averse to telling a story against himself.