The Hamster that Loved Puccini

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Description

Simon Hoggart is back with a new treasure-trove of Christmas round robins. And, this time, the bete noire of the Christmas post illustrates the seven deadly sins of the middle classes, including boastfulness (dazzlingly clever children who play the saxophone and ski for Britain); smugness (their job, their house, their holidays are perfect); tiny-mindedness (do we really need to be told how to start a jigsaw by looking for the straight bits); whimsy (letters written by pets or babies); and the dreaded over-sharing, in which every illness and operation is described in minute detail. Accompanied by Hoggart's wicked commentary, The Hamster that loved Puccini invites us to ponder what compels people to write these letters, and what they tell us about them - and ourselves.

Reviews

As hilarious and scathing as you'd expect from the Guardian sketch writer * Vogue *
The best book of the lot. -- Gift Books for Christmas * Daily Telegraph *
One that should feature in the stocking of anyone who has ever opened a Christmas card to find a computer-typed letter beginning with the dreaded words "Dear All" * Daily Mail *

Author Bio

Simon Hoggart was the parliamentary sketch-writer and diarist for the Guardian. He also wrote about wine and TV for the Spectator and was the former host of Radio 4's News Quiz. Atlantic Books published Don't Tell Mum: Hair-Raising Messages Home from Gap-Year Travellers in 2006 and The Christmas Letters in 2007. His collection of parliamentary sketches covering the Blair era, The Hands of History, was published in 2007.