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Academy Award-nominated animated feature following the attempts of
a pirate captain to outdo his rivals, featuring the vocal talents
of Hugh Grant, David Tennant and Salma Hayek. Pirate Captain (voice
of Grant) is determined to win the coveted 'Pirate of the Year'
award. He is aware, however, that he will face stiff competition
from other buccaneers including Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and
Cutlass Liz (Hayek). But the Captain has other issues as well.
Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) is determined to capture him and
hold him to account for his pirating, while the weight of history
hangs over his encounter with a young man named Charles Darwin
(Tennant).
Prisoners of Geography meets Bill Bryson: a funny, fascinating,
beautifully illustrated - and timely - history of countries that,
for myriad and often ludicrous reasons, no longer exist. 'Countries
are just daft stories we tell each other. They're all equally
implausible once you get up close' Countries die. Sometimes it's
murder, sometimes it's by accident, and sometimes it's because they
were so ludicrous they didn't deserve to exist in the first place.
Occasionally they explode violently. A few slip away almost
unnoticed. Often the cause of death is either 'got too greedy' or
'Napoleon turned up'. Now and then they just hold a referendum and
vote themselves out of existence. This is an atlas of nations that
fell off the map. The polite way of writing an obituary is: dwell
on the good bits, gloss over the embarrassing stuff. This book
fails to do that. And that is mainly because most of these dead
nations (and a lot of the ones that are still alive) are so weird
or borderline nonsensical that it's impossible to skip the
embarrassing stuff. The life stories of the sadly deceased involve
a catalogue of chancers, racists, racist chancers, conmen, madmen,
people trying to get out of paying tax, mistakes, lies, stupid
schemes and General Idiocy. Because of this - and because treating
nation states with too much respect is the entire problem with
pretty much everything - these accounts are not fussed about adding
to all the earnest flag saluting in the world, however nice some of
the flags are.
London, 1840: Wagner's latest opera plays to packed houses while
disgruntled workers gather in crowded pubs to eat ice cream and
plan the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the Pirate Captain
finds himself incarcerated at Scotland Yard, in a case of mistaken
identity.
Discovering that his doppelganger is none other than Karl Marx, the
Captain and his crew are unwittingly caught up in a sinister plot
that involves intellectual giants, enormous beards, and a quest to
discover whether ham might really be the opium of the people.
Includes, at no additional charge, "The Wit and Wisdom of the
Pirate Captain"--"a Major Philosophical Work,"
On the Matter of Love:
If you're off to fight in a battle, snap a ship's biscuit in half
and give your girlfriend the other half. When you meet again, they
will match--like two halves of a single soul! Hopefully, this will
stop her sleeping with other men.
On Life in General:
Life is like a big shanty. Everything will be fine so long as
everyone sings in harmony. But if someone plays a duff note on the
accordion or tries to break-dance at a sensitive bit, then there
will be all sorts of trouble, mark my words.
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