Craig Brown on A Classless Society

Craig Brown is the best humourist in the country. He inherited the title twelve years ago, on the death of Auberon Waugh. Indeed Waugh himself called Brown a genius:

That cover illustrates part of why I rate him: having written some of the most acute satires of the time, he packages it like a Top of the Pops album from the 1970s. That's just magnificent, drawing inspiration equally from high politics and low culture. And, as I've written here before, he was one of the few to comment intelligently about Gary Glitter, back in the days when Glitter was the great tabloid hate-figure.

I've loved Brown's writing for so long that I was deeply apprehensive when I heard he was reviewing my book A Classless Society for the Mail on Sunday. With all due respect (as footballers say, but in this instance meant sincerely) to anyone else who might read the book, it was his good opinion that I really wanted.

And, happily, here's his review: 'the field of instant history now attracts some of this country's liveliest and most intelligent writers [and] Alwyn W Turner ranks high among them: ravenously inquisitive, darkly comical and coolly undeceived.' He says more nice things as well, and he gives the book five stars.

Five stars from the man who created the TV parody Norman Ormal, one of the definitive works of the 1990s! I'm overjoyed. I'm very grateful to Mr Brown and to the Mail on Sunday.

Nice too that they mentioned my forthcoming appearance at the Henley Literary Festival.

I'd also like to thank Matthew Engel and the Financial Times for his review of the book: 'very readable and enjoyable ... Reading A Classless Society is like a safari through vaguely familiar country, illuminated by a shrewd, fair-minded guide with an elephantine memory.'

I like that. Particularly the 'elephantine' bit.