Stanley Johnson at the Windsor Festival 09
Stanley Johnson and Melissa Crawshay-Williams
Stanley was marvellous giving a talk about his latest book Stanley I Presume and made the audience literally cry with laughter. Thanks for a great time Stanley!
Photograph thanks to Doug Harding at Kaptured Moments International
http://www.kapturedmoments.co.uk/
English Food – enjoy with gusto!
Tom brings us the delights of the best of English food in an entertaining and tempting new book: Full English: A Journey through the British and their Food by Tom Parker Bowles. His chapter on London food is fabulous.
A richly enjoyable defence of the world’s most unfairly derided cuisine
- Christopher Hirst, The Independent
Boris admirer and food travel writer Tom Parker Bowles, delighted his audience recently at the Windsor Literary Festival with his lively, down to earth introduction to his new book. Full English published this year by Ebury Press, is not just a list of recipes; it is a descriptive tour of England from West Country cider brewers to Yorkshire tripe dressers sampling all the while the very best of real English food: Bury black pudding, home-cured Wiltshire bacon and the planet’s finest cheddar. As well as recipes for the traditional Apple and Rhubarb Crumble and Lancashire Hotpot you will find Battered Tripe and Eel Pie. His chapter on London describes the Capital as a “great ethnic and cultural stew, that has been cosmopolitan ever since the Romans decided to set up shop”. Tom is pioneering in his quest is to delve beneath the surface to unearth the real story behind our eating habits and what the food of today says about us: organic heaven or mass-produced hell? His favourite recipes are listed to follow: potted shrimps and devilled kidneys.
I recommend the book to any lover of all things British. As Tom himself says: “ Good English food is undoubtedly criminally underrated, not least because so few visitors have actually eaten it.”
This book is available from Random House Books and Amazon.
Dr Samuel Johnson: 300th Anniversary of his birth this week
You know what, I doubt whether he’d even get a column in today’s newspapers. No one would dare hire him. If Dr Johnson were writing in modern Fleet Street, his views would be denounced as utterly outrageous. Foreign ambassadors would be constantly on the Today programme, demanding apologies for the insult done to their country.
Polly Toynbee would be in a state of permanent apoplexy. Any newspaper that dared to print his views would face the wrath of the Equalities Commission. It must be admitted – 300 years after the birth of one of the greatest figures of English literature – that some of his stuff can seem outré to the point of unacceptability.
He is not just sexist. He is not just xenophobic. He is a free-market, monarchy-loving advocate of the necessity of human inequality.
Listen to him bashing the Americans. “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.”
Ireland? Worth seeing, but not worth going to see. The French – a dirty bunch, blowing into the spouts of teapots to make them pour properly.
As for the Scots, they are mainly liars who had no cabbage until Cromwell introduced it. They subsist on horse-food, and the finest sight a Scottish person can see is the high road leading to England. Not even Simon Heffer would get away with that kind of Jock-bashing, tongue in cheek
or not.
Samuel Johnson thought the decline in the use of the cane would harm educational attainment. It wasn’t just that he was opposed to women having jobs. He thought it was a bit off for them even to paint or draw. “Public practice of any art, and staring in men’s faces, is very indelicate in a female,” he said; and as for a woman preaching, it “was like a dog walking on its hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done
at all.”
You might find some Daily Telegraph columnists who still think like that – but not in print. And no matter how odd some of us look in our picture bylines, Dr Johnson was positively bizarre.
Stanley Johnson Quiz
Stanley is addressing the Windsor Festival on Friday 2nd October and to celebrate this occasion we are giving away a signed copy of his latest autobiographical book. Just complete the quiz below!
QUIZ ON THE JOHNSON FAMILY
Stanley Johnson Book Launch
Stanley I Presume
Boris was present at the book launch to mark the publication of his father’s autobiography (up to 40 years old) at Waterstones in Notting Hill Gate last night. His glamorous sister, Rachel Johnson, interviewed Stanley and we were regaled with side-splittingly funny stories about the Johnson clan. You have to read this awesome book to hear details about his population control initiative and ‘Pills Grim Progress’, his poetic prowess, solace he found in pollution control, the briefcase he lost off a landrover in a desert containing family passports and flight tickets, that was later found and handed to him with the words: “Stanley, I presume?”, and many perfectly true and amazing stories from deep and darkest Devon.
This autobiography goes back to Boris’s grandfather, greatgrandfather and King George II.
Stanley *you rock* and now all we need is to read your sequel for 40 years + …
Available from all good bookshops and Amazon.co.uk ISBN: 987-0-00-729672-9
“The Plan: 12 months to renew Britain” by Daniel Hannan MEP and Douglas Carswell MP
The Plan has been written by two young politicians who have discovered first hand how inert is the machinery of the British state, and how intense is the consequent anger on the doorstep. They offer an analysis of why people are sick and tired of politicians, and what can be done about it. Douglas Carswell, is the forward-looking MP for Harwich and Clacton, and Daniel Hannan the firebrand MEP for the South of England. You can read more about Douglas here and about Dan, here.
Britain is heading in the wrong direction. The British people are giving up on politics and politicians. The Plan is a book that sets out how to put Britain on the right track again.
The Plan proposes to restore meaning to the ballot box, freedom to the citizen and dignity to Parliament. It puts forward a radical legislative programme to:
- - Clean up Westminster
- - Devolve power to the lowest practicable level
- - Make Public services work for the people who use them
- - Bring foreign and domestic policy back in line with public opinion
- - Replace the quango state with genuine democracy
- - Refresh our political system through localism and the use of referendums
Douglas and Dan show how a future government could actually shift powers back, from Brussels to Westminster, from Whitehall to town halls, from the state to the citizens.
Things do not have to be as they are. The Plan shows how we can change our country for the better.
The Plan is available ‘from all good bookshops’ from October 6th and the ISBN is: 13-9780955979903 or order your copy direct at: www.Renew-Britain.com
