Product Description

An utterly brilliant follow-up to the humour classic, by Britain's funniest writer. Seventy-five years on from the publication of 1066 and All That, Craig Brown takes over where Sellars and Yeatman left off. With all the zest and exuberance of the original, 1966 and All That takes us on a half-remembered journey of imperial decline, loss of moustaches, The Sewers Crisis, angry young men, slightly cheesed-off young ladies, the onset of rock 'n' roll, the doomed romance of Princess Margaret and Pete Townshend, the decade of the Ironing Lady - and an unstoppable increase in the quantity of Royals. 1966 and all that - all the modern history you can't remember, narrated in a way you can't begin to understand. There is an exam too, so please pay attention.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #253032 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

Ben Schott
‘A work of comic brilliance . . . disconcertingly like my GCSE history course.’

Andrew Roberts
'Easily the funniest comic writer in Britain today, Craig Brown has precisely caught the genius of Sellar and Yeatman'

Sir Elton John
'We love Craig Brown!'

Customer Reviews

A Worthy Sequel
I think Sellar and Yeatman would have approved of this - huge fun which had me laughing helplessly page after page. The more history you 'know' the funnier it is, though it also helps to have a taste for appalling puns. As with 1066 and all that, this take on history is sometimes very pointed and insightful. Recommended.

A New Historical Error
I note that not all the readers reviewers liked this, and although the 1930's original "1066 And All That" is rightly acknowledged as a classic, the effect of this kind of parody is always likley to be amusing rather than belly-laugh funny.

True, some of the puns are overly and sometimes unnecessarilly contrived, but there are some good moments: Grandhi walking round India "stirring up inaction"; Jesse Matthews, unexpected victor of the 1936 Olympics; the coronation in black and white, "as colour was still strictly rationed"; British World War 2 pow's, permitted nothing but "a selection of ropes, false passports, fancy moustaches, German phrase books, a selection of pantomine costumes, a wooden horse and a couple of gliders".

My favourite characters: Alexander Gissa Bell, and, for some reason, my biggest personal laugh: "the Webbs, Donald and Daffy" (bit of an historians' in-joke, that one); most obscure pun, Admiral Duncan Donitz; and Most Memorable event: the end of Mrs Thatcherism; her "loyal ministers" have individually "told her she was absolutely marvellous, but that she'd possibly be even that a little bit more marvellous if she left and never came back. She took the hint, opting to make a dignified exit from Downing Street, howling in tears, hammering on the windows and waving a blue hankie through the back windscreen of her locked car".

Nearest the knuckle of bad taste are the attempted Princess of Wails jokes, one of which makes you wince but is aimed at Tony Blur and hits the mark. Most painfully satirical are the French Resistance jokes: "under the brilliant guise of collaboration" the French "performed well disguised acts of resistance such as entertaining Nazi stormtroopers in their homes and turning in Jews". They also whistled the Marseillaise in the streets, but "for maximum impact", in 1946. Ouch.

The exam papers are better than the original, surreal and spot on, particularly the absurd sources questions (and I've marked a few). It was a brave decision to update the original, but someone had to. It may not have worked. On the whole, this does. A worthy sequel. "1066 II."

Staring into space is much more profitable.
Some people evidently find this kind of contrived humour amusing; unfortunately I don't. It's weak, laboured and repetitive and although I didn't have the stamina to wade through all of it, a good flick through revealed nothing that anyone over the age of 10 would find even faintly entertaining. More staggering than the poor quality of the text however, is the hyperbole indulged in by the reviewers, all familiar names who write similar kinds of books so I guess it's a case of "jobs for the boys". Anyway I was given my copy but whatever you do don't waste your hard earned cash!