There used to be a literate and entertaining radio quiz show on the BBC called My Word!, where each episode ended with a “feghoot,” i.e. a well-known phrase or saying humorously twisted by puns.

A similar principle has been adopted by Brian Allgar and Marcus Bales, with the added challenge that verse is the medium and the framing genre is a gonzo genealogy of the Bales family. It’s a mighty task in a light vein, more than sixty entries ranging across the centuries and continents, an unfolding narrative of punning stunts, bold to the point of audacity and mixing the elegant with the gut-busting winceworthy. Some of them ask weird, insoluble questions—“Is a bard in the Andes worth two in the Bush?”—some are hilarious counterfactuals “Joshua fit the bottle of Géricault.” Others are cheerfully gruesome, involving mutilation and cannibalism.

End of spoilers. The Bales family, or dynasty, has been everywhere, done everything, high and low, and the authors have recorded the history of its fortunes and personalities with dashing eloquence. This is a collection of verse pieces that will happily lift the spirits at a time when smiles, titters and guffaws are at a premium. If it’s all in the mind, that’s fine by me.

—Basil Ransome-Davies

If you’re looking for some laughter in your life, follow the exploits of the fictional Bales family.

Each unlikely adventure ends with a terrible pun (which all good puns should be). The various Bales, sixty or so, range from conjuror to Pope, cryptographer to chef. Oh, and Aunt Marlene who had an affair with Yul Brynner—“Yul never wore cologne.” If you didn’t get that one, I advise you to read the book. Or if you did. I guarantee you’ll find a lot to chuckle about on every page.

—Sylvia Fairley

Shaggy dog stories are all very well, as far as they go, but so few of them rhyme. If this state of affairs has been distressing to you, relief is at hand. Look no further than the elaborately constructed scenarios and eye-watering puns in this volume of painstakingly researched, by no means wholly fabricated, family history poems. Do you avoid hotels that host board game tournaments because you can’t put up with chess nuts boasting in an open foyer? Then this is the book for you. Do you prefer your eggs Benedict served on a shiny hubcap because there’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise? Your table is waiting. Would you like to hear the cast of Hair sing about the awning of the cage of asparagus? Have we got front-row seats for you!

—Chris O’Carroll

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Baleful Biographica

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