Product Description

Strange Days Indeed, by Francis Wheen. The nostalgic whiff of the seventies evokes memories of loons and disco, Abba and Fawlty Towers. However, beneath the long hair it was really a theme park of mass paranoia. Strange Days Indeed tells the story of the decade that a young Francis Wheen walked into having pronounced he was dropping out to join the alternative society. Instead of the optimistic dreams of the sixties he found a world on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown, huddled over candles waiting for the next terrorist bomb, kidnapping or food shortage warning. Whether it was Nixon's demented behaviour in the White House, Harold Wilson's insistence that 'they' (whoever 'they' were) were out to get him, or the trial of Rupert Bear, it is a story almost too fantastical to be true. With his brilliantly acute sense of the absurd Francis Wheen slices through the pungent melange of mistrust and conspiratorial fever to expose the sickly form of a decade in which nations were brought to a sclerotic halt by power cuts, military coups, economic anarchy and the arrival of Uri Geller. Since the Great Crash of our generation barely a week passes without some allusion to that distant decade. As we are consumed by the heady stench of our own collective meltdown, there is no better guide than Francis Wheen to shine his Swiftian light on the true nature of the era that has returned to haunt us. Amidst the chaos Strange Days Indeed is an hilarious and jaw-droppingly revealing chronicle of the golden age of the paranoid style.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1426 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 388 pages

Review
`delightfully unorthodox history..The strangest decade has received the treatment it has long deserved' Book of The Week Time Out --Book of The Week Time Out

`This gallery of grotesques is great fun' TLS --TLS

`fascinating, wonderfully funny and curiously terrifying' Waterstones Books Quarterly
--Waterstones Books Quarterly

`wonderfully deadpan and precise writer' The Scotsman --The Scotsman

`Wheen expertly controls the reins, pacing the narrative just right so there is always the desire to be led further into the maze of `70's madness. Wheen is surely our most eminent satirical writer, and I just hope that he is looking at our present decade through the same lens, and is just as busy getting that book ready' Tribune --Tribune

`Wheen's view of the Seventies in Britain is unrelentingly grim' The Spectator
--The Spectator

`hugely entertaining..Wheen has a tremendous sense of the absurd' Independent on Sunday --INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

`What makes this book such an outrageously funny, entertaining read is the stream of anecdotes, from the Oz obscenity trial to the mercenary coup plotters who fly into the Seychelles posing as rugby-playing members of the fictitious Ancient Order of Froth Blowers, their weapons hidden in their luggage under piles of toys 'for disabled children'. Not even the most outrageous novelist could make this kind of stuff up, but perhaps only a writer of Francis Wheen's skill and touch could turn it into a book as glorious, memorable and laugh-out-loud hilarious as this.' Literary Review --LITERARY REVIEW

'Wheen's high-octaine, rollicking and impressionistic survey' Mail on Sunday --MAIL ON SUNDAY

`In a dozen fluent chapters of potted biography and cultural history, he sketches a broad jittery panorama' Guardian
-- GUARDIAN

Chosen as an Observer 'Book of the Year' by Melvyn Bragg
--Observer

Chosen by Patrick Bishop as Book of the Year
--Evening Standard

Books of the Year
--The Independent

`Francis Wheen is a superb, idiosyncratic chronicler of our times and Strange Days Indeed is a glittering, pinpointed view on the 1970s. Wheen has a scholar's mind, the energy of a supercharged magpie and a lofty wit that never sours.' - Melvyn Bragg --Observer

`Delightfully unorthodox history...The strangest decade has received the treatment it has long deserved.' - Time Out, Book of the Week. --Time Out

`Wheen's portrait of Nixon has a Shakespearean richness' - Roger Lewis, Spectator, Books of the Year --Spectator

`Not even the most outrageous novelist could make this kind of stuff up, but perhaps only a writer of Francis Wheen 's skill and touch could turn it into a book as glorious, memorable and laugh-out-loud hilarious as this.' - Dominic Sandbrook, Literary Review
--Literary Review

`A page-turner...endless pleasure.' - Independent --Indendent

`Wheen couldn't write a dull book if he tried...And while not even he could make the 1970s likeable, few could make the crimes, follies and misfortunes of that wretched decade so entertaining.' - Sunday Times --Sunday Times

`Wonderfully deadpan and precise' - London Evening Standard --Evening Standard

`I'll read anything by Francis Wheen .' - Nick Hornby, novelist.

`This is a writer who can dispatch an argument with the flick of a wrist, who can get humour to do in one well-timed movement what others labour over fifty pages to achieve.' - Sir David Hare, playwright.

`Wheen is surely our most eminent satirical writer.' - Tribune --PRAISE FOR FRANCIS WHEEN

About the Author
Francis Wheen is an author and journalist who was named Columnist of the Year for his contributions to the Guardian. He a regular contributor to Private Eye and is the author of several books, including a highly acclaimed biography of Karl Marx which has been translated into twenty-two languages and the bestselling How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. He recently wrote the screen play for The Lavender List, a biopic on Harold Wilson's last days in government. His collected journalism, Hoo-Hahs and Passing Frenzies, won the George Orwell prize in 2003.

Customer Reviews

The Seventies Comedown.
Its a common allegory to compare the sixties to the hedonistic party while the seventies was its hangover, but coupled with the sour anxiety at the time ran an even deeper, all-pervasive band of post-excess malaise, rampant paranoia.

The cast here are Nixon and Kissinger acting like Bond Villians, a button-press from a world destroying nuclear arsenal; Wilson and his huddled, terrified acolytes in Downing Street, Uri Gellar and a milion bending spoons, and numerous other mad or maddening characters, acted out against a canvas of drab, the psychadelic rainbows of the previous decade now drained to various shades of grey, lurching deeper into stagnation, fear and gloom. If you've ever read Wheen's previous pieces on the Seventies (theres a couple of choice cuts in 'Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies')you'll know what to expect.

As with every book, indeed everything Wheen has ever written, this is Grade A Unputdownable. His style is hilarious yet terrifying, his research deep and thorough, and his eye for the absurd sharp. The anotations come thick and fast, each one a juicy little side order to the main course you'll wolf down.

How the hell we got out of the decade without revolution, right wing coup or nuclear annhiliation remains a mystery, but Im only glad I wasn't around till 1973, and 3 Day Weeks, Crazed Presidents and paranoid PMs meant rather less to me than Watership Down, Star wars and Floella Benjamin.

A great companion piece to David Aaronovitch's very fine 'Voodoo Histories'...but wait. Two brilliant books on paranoic conspiracy out at the same time...there must be a more sinister connection...

Makes the Soviets seem sane.
At a safe distance, we can laugh at this history. If everyone had known at the time what Francis Wheen reveals of the time we would all have had a nervous breakdown. Our rulers seem to have been mad, bad and (given that they had their fingers on the nuclear button) very dangerous indeed.
Wheen has taken advantage of the deaths of most of the main actors to expose some previously libelous truths. Whether his seventies history would be as mad if extended beyond 1976 or not depends perhaps on whether some of the late seventies figures are still alive.
Of those who are dead, we know that Nixon was a paranoiac drunk, Heath an imbecile, Wilson a fruitcake, the leader of the largest UK trade union a soviet agent... All good rollicking stuff! Great laughs - at a distance.
You'll read this book at a sitting or two. Then you'll want more. Wheen's other stuff is good too:How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern DelusionsHoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies His book on Marx has been highly praised by non_Marxists, and though I've not read it that's good enough for me, but I can't find the link. Can it be that the British are so bored with Socialism that Marx is out of print?

Up to scratch
The idea that a decade can be defined by events or a prevailing mood is open to question but Francis Wheen has used it to rest his thirteen pieces of writing on.

Whether or not the 'decadist' approach is credible is a moot point here because whenever Wheen writes he is never less than interesting and entertaining.

His fans won't be disappointed.