Recommendations based on "A Dead Man in Deptford"

Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels are consistent number one bestseller in England, where they have catapulted him into the highest echelons of parody next to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen.In this Discworld installment, Death comes to Mort with an offer he can't refuse -- especially since being, well, dead isn't compulsory.As Death's apprentice, he'll have free board and lodging, use of the company horse, and he won't need time off for family funerals. The position is everything Mort thought he'd ever wanted, until he discovers that this perfect job can be a killer on his love life.

Three brilliantly comic novels revolving around the University of Rummidge and the eventful lives of its role-swapping academics.

At fourteen, Adrian Mole's life continues to be nothing but a set of tragic circumstances: His tempestuous relationship with an alluring schoolmate tortures him, while his intellectualism continues to be ignored by the British press. Despite it all he remains as agonizingly funny as ever in this, the second of his diaries.

‘The finest book ever written about England and the English’ Stuart Maconie ‘J. B. Priestley is one of our literary icons of the 20th Century and it is time that we all became re-acquainted with his genius.’ Dame Judi Dench Three years before George Orwell made his expedition to the far and frozen North in The Road to Wigan Pier, celebrated writer and broadcaster JB Priestley cast his net wider, in a book subtitled ‘a Rambling but Truthful Account of What One Man Saw and Heard and Felt and Thought During a Journey Through England During the Autumn of the Year 1933.’ Appearing first in 1934, it was a huge and immediate success. Today, it still stands as a timeless classic: warm-hearted, intensely patriotic and profound. An account of his journey through England – from Southampton to the Black Country, to the North East and Newcastle, to Norwich and home – English Journey is funny and tender. But it is also a forensic reading of a changing England and a call to arms as passionate as anything in Orwell’s bleak masterpiece. Moreover, it both captured and catalysed the public mood of its time. In capturing and describing an English landscape and people hitherto unseen, writing scathingly about vested interests and underlining the dignity of working people, Priestley influenced the thinking and attitudes of an entire generation and helped formulate a public consensus for change that led to the birth of the welfare state. Prophetic and as relevant today as it was nearly ninety years ago, English Journey is an elegant and readable love letter to a country Priestley finds unfathomable.

'A beautifully observed and sympathetic tour of modern Britain that runs on the tracks of our years.' David Quantick 'Charming...The accounts will make any fan of railways want to experience these delights for themselves.' - The Independent All aboard for a one-of-a-kind journey by train to some of the most obscure parts of Britain On the 200th birthday of the world's first passenger-carrying railway, Nige Tassell sets out to ride Britain's railway network all the way to its lesser-travelled-to corners, its seldom-visited outposts. From Wick to Penzance and many points in between, he stays on until the end of the line. He is the last man sitting. The sixteen final destinations he visits offer sixteen different stories. By delving into their histories, by speaking to their people and by having a good old-fashioned nose around, Tassell reveals much about places that rarely have light cast upon them - from ferry ports to abandoned resorts, from tiny hamlets to towns being reclaimed by the sea. It's a journey that takes in Harry Potter, Muhammad Ali, goths, Alan Bennett, Vera Brittain, Viz comic, Alex Horne, Nigel Farage. Vikings, John Betjeman, Aneurin Bevan, Tyson Fury, Charlotte Rampling's dad and the weepy judge from The Great Pottery Throwdown. All human life is here. So grab yourself a window seat for an odyssey that tells us much about Britain today. All aboard, all aboard.

Sam Bagshott, son of the late Boko Bagshott, had been at Blandings Castle only a short while, but long enough to know that anyone enjoying its hospitality must get the occasional shock. Sam braced himself as the possibilities flitted through his mind. The house was on fire? The Empress of Blandings had taken to the bottle again? Constable Evans had arrived with a search warrant? There was a wide area of speculation, and he was prepared for bad news in any form. In any form, that is to say, except the one in which it came.

With the sun finally setting on that wondrous earthy paradise that is Blandings, Vicky Underwood finds herself forcibly parted from her beloved, Jeff Bennison. Her Uncle Galahad turns his not inconsiderable talents to reuniting the love-birds. Wodehouse's final chronicle of Blandings is unfinished, but three Wodehouse admirers have supplied a treasure trove of notes and plot details, providing fascinating insights into the mind of the author.

Comic novel explores the reactions of a small town to a false engagement notice in the local paper. Winner of the 1954 Stephen Leacock memorial medal. 1980, c1954.

A LITTLE KNOWN HISTORIAL FACT- At the end of the Second World War many of our boys sustained severe attacks of entertainment at the hands of Lance-Corporal Milligan and his jazz band. Outbreaks occurred in Rome, Venice, Vienna and Krumpendorf (that well-known groin disease), and no soldier escaped the tortures that were inflicted by the Combined Services Entertainment. But while Tommy suffered, Milligan, newly demobbed, became more and more spazonkled, nay, spazonkified with Toni, the beautiful ballerina. Honestly. He's got the photographs to prove it. In Italy, in love and in civvies, could Milligan forget his native Catford? You bet your life he could! 'Desperately funny, vivid, vulgar' - Sunday Times 'He's a very funny writer' - The Times Educational Supplement 'Spike who?' - Catford Times

Consisting entirely of staff emails, this novel invites the reader to spend a fortnight in the company of Miller Shanks, an advertising agency that scales dizzying peaks of incompetence, backstabbing and pure sleaze.