Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks

The Essential Alan Coren

Alan Coren

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9781847673213
• eBook ISBN:
  9781847673954
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Edited by his children, Giles and Victoria, Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks is an anthology of writing from the former editor of Punch and Radio 4 national treasure Alan Coren, who died in October 2007.
In a prolific forty-year career Alan Coren wrote for The Times, Observer, Tatler, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Listener, Punch and the New Yorker, and published over 20 books including The Sanity Inspector, Golfing for Cats and The Collected Bulletins of Idi Amin (he turned down an invitation from Amin to visit Uganda saying, 'I'll probably end up as a sandwich'). Even twenty years ago he estimated that he had published six million words, or ten copies of War and Peace.
This anthology draws together the best of Coren's previously published material as well as new unpublished autobiographical material.
Coren was one of Britain's most prolific and now much-missed humourists, finding the comedy of life all around him and rendering it, hilariously and compellingly, in polished and witty prose which will be eagerly devoured by his loyal fanbase.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Giles and Victoria Coren
• 1. Present Laughter
• Southgate–San Francisco–Fleet Street: 1960–1969
• Introduction by Melvyn Bragg
• ‘The Funniest Writer In Britain Today’: 1970–1979
• Introduction by Victoria Wood
• Appendix: The Bulletins of Idi Amin
• The Golden Age: 1980–1989
• Introduction by Clive James
• The Cricklewood Years: 1990–1999
• Introduction by A.A. Gill
• The Last Decade: 2000–2007
• Introduction by Stephen Fry