“QUOTE ... UNQUOTE”
NEW BOOKS AND E-BOOKS
To view a complete list of my e-books
in a Kindle Store, press CTRL and click
either amazon.com
or amazon.co.uk or go to your nearest amazon outlet.
My autobiography is now available as a paperback book and as an
e-book. Either version can most easily
be found on Amazon:
I became ‘broadcasting-struck’ at a
very early age but, although I maintained my ambition to go into radio or
television when I grew up, through school in Liverpool and at university in
Oxford, I had no very clear idea of what I wanted to do if and when I got
there. It was when I landed my first job
with Granada TV in Manchester that I realised I wanted to be a writer and performer
of some description. After a short and
undistinguished stint as a hard news reporter with ITN, I gradually established
myself as a freelance contributor to a wide range of BBC radio outlets. In time, I became a presenter of news and
current affairs programmes (Today on
Radio 4, Twenty-Four Hours on World
Service) as well as in arts and entertainment.
As I relate in my radio times,
I somewhat unusually combined all my presentation work with acting in a radio comedy
classic (The Burkiss
Way to Dynamic Living) and a
radio comedy disaster (The Betty
Witherspoon Show).
This last show did mean, however,
that I got to work with Kenneth Williams.
my radio times contains a
notable portrait of that extraordinary character – along with reminiscences of some
of the many other people whom I encountered along the way, from film stars to
politicians, from leading figures in the arts to the occasional arch-villain.
Eventually, it was my mix of skills
and enthusiasms that gave rise to Quote ... Unquote,
the radio show I have devised and introduced for over 35 years. I relate how it came about, my experiences
with an astonishing variety of guests and how the brand established me as
something of an authority on aspects of popular language, the chief subject of my
many, many books.
Alongside my narrative in this ‘radio
autobiography’ is a vivid account of the personal life that underpins the
professional.
Illustrated with
pictures from my collection.
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The latest addition to my BEST GUIDE TO … series of popular language
reference e-books is:
The BEST GUIDE TO QUOTATIONS is not a dictionary of quotations in the
usual sense. It is an annotated guide to
those quotations often misquoted or misattributed or for which finding a source
has proved in some way problematical.
This e-book is the result of nearly forty years spent on the quotations
watch and brings together material from my earlier quotations ‘companions’, now
updated through twenty years of discoveries from the Quote … Unquote
Newsletter. So here is the cream of
quotations scholarship – aided by a band of worldwide quote detectives.
So, what did
Neil Armstrong actually say when he stepped on to the moon?
Did John Masefield
write ‘I must GO down’ or ‘I must DOWN to the seas again’?
Where did the
expression ‘My work here is done’ originate?
Did Napoleon
ever really say ‘Not tonight, Josephine’?
Who wrote the
graffito ‘Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere’?
Is there any
evidence that Lord Chesterfield ever said of sex that ‘the pleasure is
momentary, the position ridiculous and the expense damnable’?
These and scores of other notable sayings are here put under the
quotations microscope.
Go
to the Kindle store at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or your local amazon for more
details. A small note: you don’t
actually have to have a Kindle to read Kindle e-books. You can download (for
free) a ‘Kindle for PC’ program that lets you view the books on your PC screen
and on other devices.
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My
most recent hardback book is published by Batsford,
is entitled Don’t You Know There’s a War
On! and sub-titled Words and Phrases from the World Wars.
•
From ‘Your country needs you’ to Churchill’s ‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’,
this fascinating book is a wide-ranging exploration of words and phrases from
the two world wars.
•
Covers phrases from both home and abroad, including military terms
(‘dreadnought’), political slogans (‘a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at
each end’), slang used by soldiers abroad (‘basket case’) and comic radio-show
catchphrases (‘this is Funf speaking’).
•
Packed with information on the provenance and development of these intriguing,
quirky and sometimes crude phrases that were born out of times of conflict and
have become part of our language.
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I have recently been producing Kindle e-editions of a number of books
on my backlist. Apart from keeping the
books available, this process enables me to update them, correct them and
generally refresh them.
First out was a Kindle version of my five collections of humorous and
pointed graffiti which, it is not an exaggeration to say, were a publishing
phenomenon of the early 1980s and sold millions of copies. I have long wanted to produce a ‘complete
graffiti’ book and now I have done so.
Called The Golden Age of Graffiti, the e-book brings together the
text of the five collections, more or less exactly as originally
published. In addition there are photos
from my archive of some of the major graffiti, background notes on the most
famous ones, as well as thoughts on what has happened to the type of graffiti
jokes and stuff that was so current back then but which has now all but
disappeared under the spray-painted rubbish that bedaubs so many of our cities today. This
e-book is available from the Kindle store at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or the nearest
amazon outlet to you.
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Also available now are e-books by me, with the generic title The Best Guide to –––––
This is the biggest, best and funniest collection of humorous
quotations you will find, embracing as it does over 5,000 comic utterances of
all types: aphorisms and epigrams, retorts and putdowns, quips and one-liners,
sayings and proverbs, together with examples of unintentional humour such as
gaffes and malapropisms.
The quotations are drawn from a world-class cast of wits and humorists:
comedians, novelists, playwrights, journalists, politicians, actors,
songwriters and many others. Oscar
Wilde, Mark Twain, Noël Coward and Woody Allen are, of course, well represented
but hundreds of other exponents of the bon mot are included here, even if they
have brightened the world with only one or two of their sayings.
Nigel Rees draws on over 35 years experience of
sourcing quotations through his BBC Radio show Quote ... Unquote. This is
not just another collection of funny sayings, it is the ultimate authority on
who actually said what and is a major attempt to pin down the quotations that
readers really want to know about. Using
the search button you can find what you are looking for in The BEST GUIDE to HUMOROUS QUOTATIONS whether it be
through a word or phrase or under one of the 1,200 thematic headings.
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And then:
From
a database of some 10,000 quotes, I have selected a comprehensive and
entertaining collection from all areas of cinema. Great and memorable lines from the movies are
coupled with quotable comments by and about film-makers and film-goers. This specially revised e-book also celebrates
the language of the movies – the catchphrases and titles, the slogans and
clichés. Above all The Best Guide to Movie Quotes hears from the professionals – the
actors, directors, producers, writers and critics – and tells us what they
love, loathe and lament about the business, the pictures, the
players – and about each other.
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