Bournville: From the bestselling author of Middle England

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One of the better choices in the book is to have one candidate as a lobbyist for Cadbury in the long-running Chocolate Wars as some other European countries refuse for years to allow English chocolate (with its fat content) to be sold as chocolate – the character’s wife ultimately becoming an MEP based on the strong working knowledge of Brussels they gain. The book’s assertion is that the fat was first added due to wartime shortages and that the British love of UK-style milk-chocolate is effectively a form of post war nostalgia (as an aside there is also the small fact that it tastes delicious). While in Brussels and around the lobby and press group, the character first encounters the tousle haired Boris – and cleverly he re-appears later as a part is set in Cllywd South in Boris’s unsuccessful 1997 general election candidacy (the switch of that very red seat to Conservatives in 2019 when Boris is now party leader also being featured). The treatment of Boris is I felt nuanced – in both Brussels and Wales there is a sneaking admiration for his ability to get people onside through not acting seriously. Later though the Brussels lobbyist despairs that such a character is in charge during COVID times. The author’s note amusingly after the usual disclaimers about resemblances to real people says of his Boris character: “he might, of course, seem familiar to some readers, whether he’s a fictional character or not remains hard to determine with any certainty” In a 2001 newspaper interview, Coe described himself as an atheist. [16] Honours and awards [ edit ] This is another eminently readable Coe, full of believable characters and fizzing dialogue. And it couldn't be more timely Big Issue E’ curioso che quasi in contemporanea, ma con ben altro piglio e personaggi meno pallidi e più sfaccettati, anche Ian McEwan abbia pubblicato un romanzo fiume biografico che a sua volta interpreta in filigrana la recente storia d’Inghilterra, benché in quel caso il racconto sia meno corale e molto più incentrato sul protagonista e sulle figure femminili che ne condizionano l’esistenza.

Jonathan, Coe (8 November 2018). Middle England. [London]. ISBN 9780241309469. OCLC 1065525001. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) Jonathan Coe’s only regret must be that the book had gone to press before the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Which members of the Lamb family would have spent 48 hours in the queue to see her lying in state, and which would have sympathised with those arrested for anti-royalist activism? We may need a sequel – and, given the pace of British politics, we may need it very soon. Bournville is Jonathan Coe's most ambitious novel yet . . . a novel about people and place. Entertaining and often poignant, it presents a captivating portrait of how Britons lived then and the way they live now EconomistCoe's interwoven paeans to the lives of those rooted in the very centre of the UK - The Rotter's Club and Middle England among them - blend comedy, tragedy and social commentary in enjoyably memorable fashion, and his latest, Bournville, is no exception . . . Coe's particular gift is to understand how nostalgia, regret and an apprehension of what the future will bring might make us more, not less, empathetic to the frailties of those around us FT, Best Audiobooks of the Year

In fact, a good bit of what takes place in the pandemic chapters are not the experiences of the fictional Lamb family, but of the Coe family. Fielder, Jez; Alasdair Sandford; Isabel Silva (23 December 2019). "UK election: 'Getting Brexit done is going to take decades' says Jonathan Coe". Euronews . Retrieved 28 November 2021. Coe has the great gift of combining engaging human stories with a deeper structural pattern that gives the book its heft Guardian Bournville will be published in France as Le Royaume Désuni (The Disunited Kingdom) because his French editor didn’t think the brand name would have much resonance for readers outside the UK, while the idea of an ununited kingdom is all too recognisable right now. Cadbury’s may be in his DNA, but, he confesses even more quietly than usual: “The chocolate I really like, from a taste point of view, is European.” Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B. S. Johnson, London: Picador, 2004 (winner of the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction)As with Johnson, Coe wanted to try to understand the appeal of a man with so many clearly questionable qualities: “Bond is racist, misogynist, egotistical.” Coe recently persuaded his two daughters, both in their early 20s and familiar only with Daniel Craig’s Bond, to watch For Your Eyes Only. They didn’t get past the opening credits: “Is this what you used to watch in the 70s?” they asked.