Product Description

Brian Marley, a divorced Englishman, is alone in the vilest jungle on earth, about to die live on television. A contestant on "Brit Pluck, Green Hell, Two Million", the ultimate reality TV show, Marley has managed to outlive his rivals and win enough money to change his life. Except that the TV crew has just been wiped out in a helicopter crash. With the crocodiles closing in, he has no option but to climb the vast cliff at his back. Inevitably, he falls...And awakes in a lost world that is remarkably like an Englishman's heaven. There's cricket and rugger, the Union Jack, plucky boys, pretty girls, a tough but fair headmaster - an entire miniature civilization preserved by the surviving passengers from Comet IV, which vanished in 1958. Firmly convinced that they were the first casualties of World War III, they have kept an idyllic, pre-sixties England alive. But when Brian's rescuers do find him at last, when the world of the Daily Star confronts that of the Eagle, when the Prime Minister, spotting an opportunity for a sound-bite, meets the Headmaster, the novel shifts gear into a glorious satire worthy of Evelyn Waugh.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #207731 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Tim Lott, Evening Standard
‘Completely barmy, and rather dementedly appealing’

Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail
‘Speak for England is consistently inventive and entertaining’

Clemency Burton-Hill, Observer
"Speak for England gets progressively more amusing and intelligent throughout… The tone of the narrative is pitch-perfect"

Customer Reviews

James Hawes...
Once again the guy grasps the zeitgeist and does something new and unexpected with it - for my money the best and most underrated popular novelist we have. A great book which subtly contrasts the false images of 'the good old days' with the equally pernicious lies about how great life is now. As in 'White Merc' etc, Hawes remains concerned about the gap between the shiny lives the media constantly present as the norm and the stressed-out relative failures we all feel ourselves to be. Very talented, insightful writer, shamefully ignored IMHO.

A funny parody for England
Mid life crisis-riven divorced father Marley goes on desparate last throw jungle reality TV show, survives slaughter of crew and contestants to be rescued by a tribe descended from British public school survivors of a 1950s plane crash, who return to our addled more-or-less present, bringing with them a promise of simplicity, truth and a self-confident Englishness. This very funny novel works by welding Marley's yearnings for lost promises and unmet expectations with the parallel yearnings of a clapped-out social order. The Headmaster, a wonderfully realised villain/hero, initially satisfies both - but can we really stop being knowing and critical? And doesn't it all end up rather horrible if we try? Underpinned by a sort of Waugh-ish sensibility, this novel fizzes and hisses with ideas, with wonderful riffs of polemical rhetoric. And for a really funny set-piece, the scene where Marley explains to the public school boys and staff what has happened since 1957 beats just about everything written by an Englishman since Gussie Fink-Nottle gave the prizes at Market Snodbury Grammar School.

Side-splitting
Hilarious parody of an English teacher who takes part in a depraved reality tv show. He ends up stumbling across a tribe of forgotten plane crash survivors from the 1950s. It really is an hilarious book that had me laughing out loud just reading the blurb.