Brian Viner

A book about the Great British Holiday and the Great British on holiday.

For all those who have battled with putting a tent up in a howling gales and rain in August or have been stuck behind caravans, or moaned about the towels left behind by Germans, this is the book for you.

Viner touches on lots of different subjects, not always in depth, but enough to get a flavour. It is very, very funny in parts, so much so that I did laugh out loud at some parts.

Very good, well worth a read.… (mehr)

Viner is a newspaper columnist and television critic who grew up in Northern England and seems to remember every show his family enjoyed during his teen years in the seventies. Chapters in this book discuss the hit shows like "The Sweeney", "The Professionals", "Fawlty Towers", "I, Claudius" and the impact on he and his schoolmates from the enormous amount of American shows imported. Other chapters on the pioneers of British cooking shows and the rise and fall of chat show host Simon Dee introduced me to names I'd never heard before, and as Viner was a critic at a large London paper, he's had the opportunity to meet many of the people he grew up watching and includes bits of his interviews.
Even though many of the performers and shows discussed in the book were new to me, I ate it up. And I found that a lot of what he mentioned could be found on Youtube, like clips of Simon Dee's show. I do have two gripes: first, throughout the book, in every chapter, Viner compares his own childhood to his children's and is filled with pity for them. This was such an old man moan and I'm sure I was rolling my eyes as much as his teenagers were. Secondly, it's a book about a visual medium, yet didn't have a single photograph. Which is kinda weird. Otherwise it's highly recommended even for those who want to read about England in this decade in general, as he frequently goes off on little sidetrips discussing what was happening in the country or in his personal life at the time a particular show aired.… (mehr)