This slim volume, skinnier than a size-zero model, belongs to the increasingly tiresome genre of clever-dick lit. If you have heard of Blink, Nudge, Snark or Freakonomics, you’ll know the form; indeed you could probably write one yourself. Choose a proverb, any old proverb: ‘more haste, less speed’, say. Reformulate it as a cute title – Trudge: What the Tortoise Can Teach Us About Wealth, Health and Happiness – and the book more or less writes itself. Sit back and wait for Barack Obama or David Cameron to be seen reading it. You are now officially a guru.

Dec 2009

Fictive Propaganda

Mrs Thatcher Meets Adrian Mole

Licentious Prude, Written in Wind and Water

Epater Les Highbrows

Too Soft on Worzel

What Happened to Lincoln?

One For The Lassies?

Deafened by Birtspeak

He Names the Guilty Men

Mystery of Gargantua’s Top Secret Powder Puff

Very Healthy Grunt

Dirty Dick Pikeman

His Lips Are Sealed

Off With Their Heads

Vice Captain

Passing the Buck

Crystal Balls-Up

When Candlemakers Got Rich

Scourge of Obscenity

Summer of ’79

Unfit to Rule

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