A choice of quirky books

The humorist Paul Jennings wrote for Punch when it was still funny — that is, up to and including the editorship of the late Alan Coren.

The humorist Paul Jennings wrote for Punch when it was still funny — that is, up to and including the editorship of the late Alan Coren. Jennings also wrote such books as Oddly Bodlikins (1953) and I Said Oddly, Diddle I? (1961). It was he who classified book reviewers as batchers, betchers (‘Betcher I could write it better than you’), bitchers, botchers and butchers. In this and my next review, I am cast as a promiscuous batcher. This first batch is of ‘quirky’ books; the next will be of ‘funny’ books. I reserve the right to be a betcher, a bitcher and a butcher too — I hope not a botcher.

The quirky books are small and in some cases suitable as Christmas gifts — quirky with the turkey. It is not their primary purpose to make you laugh, but several of them may do. I laughed more at than with Le Dossier: How to Survive the English (John Murray, £12.99), which purports to be by a French lady, Hortense de Monplaisir, and translated by Sarah Long. It is actually entirely the work of Long, but she knows both her France and her England pretty well — the blurb tells us she lived in Paris for ten years. The book is largely anti-English, and not affectionately so. I believe the English are the one nation in the world that positively enjoys being sent up. If an Englishwoman were to write a book called How to Survive the French, I doubt that many Frogs would be (to adapt a Coren phrase) writhing on the Aubusson, gurgling with rires.

One of Madame de Monplaisir’s gripes about us is that we take hardly anything seriously.