Speak For England - Hardcover

Hawes, James

3.29

174 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224073028 ISBN 13: 9780224073028

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2005

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James Hawes' wonderful new novel begins with its protagonist Brian Marley, a divorced, ineffectual teacher, all alone in a jungle about to die live on television. A reluctant contestant on Brit Pluck, Green Hell, Seven Figures, the ultimate reality TV show, Marley has somehow managed to outlive his rivals and win two million quid. Except that the helicopter sent to bring him back to civilization has crashed, and he's on his own, with a portable camera, at the foot of a monstrously tall cliff. He has no option but to start climbing...

To his astonishment, Marley doesn't die, although the world he finds at the top of that cliff is remarkably like an Englishman's version of heaven. There's cricket and rugger, the Union Jack, plucky boys, pretty girls, a tough but fair headmaster - an entire miniature civilization created by the surviving passengers from Comet IV, an airliner which vanished in 1958 carrying a jolly gang of youngsters to a public schools jamboree in Australia. Believing that they were one of the first casualties of World War III, they have survived in their jungle fastness for nearly fifty years, sustained by the Book of Common Prayer and good old English values.

Hawes' telling of this tale is as tellingly funny as anything he has ever written, but when Brian's rescuers do find him at last, when the world of the Daily Star confronts that of the Eagle, when the Prime Minister, spotting an opportunity for a sound-bite, meets the Headmaster, the novel shifts gear into a glorious satire worthy of Evelyn Waugh. The Observer called James Hawes 'the funniest British novelist writing today'. Speak for England proves it, over and over again.

(2004-03-15)

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Review:

Amusing and intelligent throughout... The tone of the narrative is pitch-perfect. (Observer)

Consistently inventive and entertaining. (Daily Mail)

A comic novelist of considerable stature... An assured, clever, raffishly inventive work. (Guardian)

Deliciously entertaining. (Independent on Sunday)

A novelist of prodigious talent. (Spectator)

From the Publisher:

A superlative comic novel from the author of A White Merc With Fins

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