Product Description

Deadpan Dixe Wills - author of The Z-Z of Great Britain - returns with his essential guide to where, precisely, to escape from the chaos of modern life.

There comes a time in everyone's life when facing up to one's own problems is simply not an option. Places to Hide is the book for that time.

Offering a wide range of hiding places in urban, rural, coastal and mountainous settings throughout Britain, Places to Hide is the essential guide for anyone who needs to disappear for a bit.

Those who repeat the mistakes of the past are doomed to forget them, so the experiences of famous hiders such as King Charles II and Lawrence of Arabia are provided in helpful glance-sized chunks to jog the memory of even the most distracted of minds.

With tips on concealment technique, total identity change and crouching, along with up-to-date information on local sources of food, water and camouflage netting, Places to Hide is ideal for the professional hider as well as those who merely wish to hide for pleasure.

Places to Hide - `You can run and now you can hide.'

Praise for Dixe Wills' The Z-Z of Great Britain:

`Exquisitely dotty, yet irresistibly charming. A project so pointless as to be vital to our national well-being.' Stephen Fry

`A champion of all things Z' Observer (Travel Book of the Week)

`A jocular guide … Dixe Wills has boldly gone to these backs of beyond to prove that we don't need to' Sunday Telegraph

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7237 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
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.'

About the Author
Dixe Wills is the author of The Z-Z of Great Britain, which remains unrivalled as a source of information on places in Britain that begin with a zed. He 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

Lordy lord
I can't even begin to describe how funny this book is. So I won't. It is, though. Very.

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.