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Miles Kington wrote a column a day for more than 30 years. In that
time he delighted, amused and gently poked fun at a large
proportion of the UK population. This book is a selection of some
of his best pieces.
A journalist, columnist, humorist and musician, Miles Kington began
his writing career at Punch, where he created Franglais, a hugely
popular fictional language, before going on to write a daily column
for The Times, followed by the Independent. He wrote over thirty
thousand newspaper columns in his lifetime, as well as contributing
to countless magazines and other publications. When he died in
2008, he left behind an enormous archive of correspondence.
Effortlessly funny and entertaining, this collection is full of
Kington's inimitable style. He had kept copies of every letter he
had sent or received for the best part of fifty years, letters to
and from the great and the good of the arts - Terry Jones, Melvyn
Bragg, Joanna Lumley, John Cleese, Andre Previn, Philip Larkin,
Alan Coren, Kenneth Williams, and many more. My Mother, The Bearded
Lady is a selection of these captivating letters, chosen and edited
by his wife, Caroline Kington.
In one of his Independent pieces Miles Kington once referred to a
volume of Edward Lear's limericks translated into French. Not an
easy task, you might think, and in translating Alphonse Allais into
English, Miles Kington set himself a similar challenge. He carried
it off with panache. As Max Harrison said in The Times, '... has
done a difficult job well, even preserving some of Allais's puns'.
Alphonse Allais has been described as the greatest humorous writer
ever. In the words of Lisa Appignanesi, 'Allais was a consummate
absurdist. From an ordinary phenomenon, simple sentiment or
situation, he would logically deduce the looniest, most macabre and
most unexpected result ... His humour kept all Paris, high and low,
waiting breathlessly for the paper which would carry his next tale
...' On first publication, in 1976, Clive James in the Observer
said 'Allais has been dead 70 years but his mocking tone ensures
him a permanently relevant after-life'. And John Sturrock in the
New Statesman, 'Allais stands, along with Jarry, at the head of the
most dazzling and highly educated tradition of French humour, as
witty as it is whimsical'. Faber Finds offers this rare book as a
tribute not only to Alphonse Allais but also Miles Kington, two
great humorists in tandem.
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