Billy Liar
Keith Waterhouse, Nick Bentley
Language: English
Pages: 166
ISBN: 1939140307
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
'Buy, borrow or beg Keith Waterhouse's outstanding new novel. I can't recommend it too highly. Waterhouse has an uncanny gift for recapturing every attitude, agony and phrase of childhood and youth.' - Daily Mirror
'I wished I'd written Keith Waterhouse's first novel; and now, even more, I wish I'd written his second . . . Billy Liar is very funny: funny in a wild and sardonic and high-spirited way without malice or cruelty.' - John Braine, author of Room at the Top
'A brilliant novel, in language fresh and sweet, with characters vivid and singular in an inventive and dynamic story. It teems, it bursts with originality.' - Saturday Review
'Extremely funny . . . its lambent humour, quick-changing from robust to the delicate, is always fresh . . . should gladden the hearts of even the most exacting readers.' - Daily Telegraph
Billy Fisher feels trapped by his working-class parents, his unfulfilling job as an undertaker's clerk, and his life in a dull, provincial town. His only refuge is in his daydreams, where he is the leader of the country of Ambrosia. Unfortunately, Billy's wild imagination leads him to tell lies constantly: to his parents, his employer, and his three girlfriends. On one tragi-comic Saturday, as Billy plots his escape to a life of adventure and excitement in London, all his lies finally catch up with him, with hilarious and disastrous results. A smash bestseller and one of the great comic novels of the 20th century, Billy Liar (1959) inspired an award-winning film, a play, a musical, a television series, and a sequel. This edition marks the novel's first publication in America in more than fifty years and includes a new introduction by Nick Bentley and a reproduction of the original jacket art by William Belcher.
The Black Death: A Personal History
Conquering Knight, Captive Lady
At my desk, between Stamp and Arthur. Every day, sitting tensed at the front of the bus, pushing it with my hands to make it faster, I had this race to the office with Shadrack. Dux-bury didn't matter; he never came rolling in until eleven and in any case he was so old that he could never remember who worked for him. It was Shadrack, with his little notebooks, and the propelling pencil rattling against his teeth, who gave all the trouble. ‘It's been noticed that you were half an hour late again.
Given her. ‘No, just said hullo. She was with somebody,’ he said, as though it did not matter. But it was my first bit of emotional meat this morning, and I was determined to make it matter, and to get the pain back inside where it belonged. ‘Who was she with?’ ‘I don't know, I don't ask people for their autographs. What's up, are you jealous, eh? Eh?’ He pronounced the word ‘jealous’ as though it were something he had dug up out of the garden, still hot and writhing. The door-bell tinkled.
Smelling salts! Go on, then, frame yourself!’ Glad to get out of it, I galloped upstairs for the smelling salts. Gran's fits, occurring nowadays with increasing regularity, always filled me with dread and, I could not help it, disgust. I had a horror that I would one day be alone with her in the house when she threw one, and I was often haunted by the thought of what I would do in these circumstances. Rummaging around in my mother's dressing-table for the smelling salts, automatically conning.
It's woke up again!’ She bared her teeth at him, registering exaggerated scorn. Afraid that she had perhaps been sounding too grateful and had made a fool of herself, she said dubiously, peering down at the cross: ‘Aren't you supposed to go to church or summat when you wear one of these?’ Arthur said: ‘Yes, you've got to take a vow of chastity.’ ‘Get back in the knifebox, bighead!’ Rita picked up my empty plate, a move I recognized as an obscure gesture of affection. ‘You can bring me a fur.
Away from platform two. The inquiry office was closed. I walked up to the roller-indicator where the trains were listed: 1.05 Wakefield, Doncaster; 1.35 Leeds (City), Derby, Kettering, London (St Pancras); 1.50 Selby, Market Weighton, Bridlington, Filey, Scarborough. There were no other trains to London that night. All the windows but one at the ticket office were boarded up. I waited under A – G until a tired man in his shirt-sleeves appeared, and I bought a single second-class to St Pancras.