The Illustrated Christmas Cracker E-Book

John Julius Norwich

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

For over forty years, John Julius Norwich has been sending out his Christmas Crackers - a personal collection of quirky quotes and literary odds and ends - to his friends instead of a Christmas card. In The Illustrated Christmas Cracker Quentin Blake has made his own selection of favourite pieces and has illustrated them in his own trademark style. From curious dictionary definitions ('Carphology. Delirious fumbling with the bedclothes,' Concise Oxford Dictionary) and tortuous palindromes ('Live dirt up a side-track carted is a putrid evil') to eighteenth-century accounts of drunken pigs and Benjamin Franklin's account of inventing bifocals, this cracker is stuffed with surprising, offbeat, often hilarious gems. Enlivened by Quentin Blake's witty illustrations, this book is the perfect stocking-filler for the discerning customer.

Leseprobe

First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Doubleday,

a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd.

This edition published in Great Britain in 2013 by Atlantic Books,

an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake 2002

The rights of John Julius Norwich to be identified as the editor and Quentin Blake as the illustrator of this work have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978 1 78239 251 4 ePub ISBN 9781782392521

Atlantic Books

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Ormond House

26-27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

Chapters

Ever since Quentin Blake and I collaborated a few years ago on The Twelve Days of Christmas, we have been looking forward to another joint project; and one day it occurred to me that it might be fun to produce an illustrated selection from my Christmas Crackers – the anthology booklet that I have been annually sending round to my friends (and selling in the best bookshops) for the past thirty-three years. The result is the slender volume you now hold in your hands.

I have been collecting bits and pieces of poetry and prose that amuse or move me for most of my adult life; but there comes a moment when every collector contracts the come-up-and-see-my-etchings syndrome and wants to show off his collection. In 1970 I couldn’t bear it any more: I chose twenty-four pieces I particularly liked, had two hundred copies printed in the simplest possible form and sent them around to my friends. At the time it never struck me that I would be repeating the process the following year, but people seemed to like the first one so I decided to have another go; and so the thing snowballed and I have been doing it every year since. Every decade the last ten Crackers are published by Penguin: Christmas Crackers in 1979, More Christmas Crackers in 1989 and Still More Christmas Crackers in 1999. (In 2009 – if I live that long – the new title threatens to pose something of a problem.)

None of them, however, has ever been illustrated – so here at least we are breaking new ground – nor could I have hoped for a more brilliant illustrator. As expected, Quentin and I have had a lot of fun putting this book together; we can only hope that you will enjoy it as much as we have.

John Julius Norwich