Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Frank Cottrell Boyce is a children’s novelist who won the Carnegie medal for Millions in 2004 and the Guardian Children’s Fiction prize for The Unforgotten Coat in 2013. Millions was made into a film by Danny Boyle, for whom Frank went on to work as the writer on the London Olympics Opening Ceremony, 2012. His other books include Framed, Cosmic, and The Astounding Broccoli Boy. He also wrote the three official sequels to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. His latest novel, Runaway Robot, was published in May 2019. Cottrell Boyce’s films include Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017) about the lives of A.A. Milne and his family.<p>'It would be wrong to cast Milne as a relic from an earlier age. Milne thought the nuclear threat was essential to end ground war. As the accumulators of chance spin on Milne is dead and I am not I feel no comfort, but I cannot help but love the human being behind the words in this book. He hated the exploitation of the poor, brutality, pompousness and lies. He had a great sense of humour and entertained many thousands of young people. Highly recommended.'<br />
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Manchester Review of Books
<p>'Readers are sure to enjoy Milne s musings on his personal library, children's books, Lewis Carroll, and the touching reasons for his decision to write no more books about Pooh. The last section Peaceful Life is ironically titled, since these emotion-charged essays are about the horrors of war (Milne was a pacifist, though he served in the British army in WWI). As for the rest: they are pleasant diversions on subjects ranging from golf ( the best game in the world at which to be bad ) to spiritualism. They are the stuff of many happy half hours of reading pleasure.'</p>
Booklist
<p>‘One of this season’s hidden gems.’</p>
Washington Post
<p>‘<em>Happy Half-Hours</em> gathers his finest pieces from gossamer light reflections on lost hats to heartbreakingly candid pieces on the horrors of the First World War.’</p>
Waterstones ‘Favourite Independently Published Books of 2020’
<p>‘Milne’s gift to write amusingly about the most trivial things is a kind of blessing. The kind that can put you back together again when all else fails.’</p>
- Frank Cottrell-Boyce,
A.A. Milne, best known as the author of the classic Winnie-the-Pooh stories, was a successful writer long before his children’s stories launched him to overnight success.
At the age of twenty-three, he was appointed the Assistant Editor of Punch magazine. He claimed ‘I know no work manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.’ But Milne had a talent for regularly turning out a thousand whimsical words on lost hats and umbrellas, tennis, dogs, faulty geysers, dotty maids, women loading film in a camera, the English obsession with rank and titles, cheap cigars, and any amount of life’s other little difficulties. He was praised for being able to produce ‘with apparently effortless ease and the utmost gaiety’ articles notable for their ‘enchanting ingenuity’.
But there was another, more serious side to Milne. After serving in World War 1, where he survived the Somme, Milne was invalided home with trench fever in 1916. His experiences made him a committed and vocal pacifist. War was nothing but ‘mental and moral degradation’. His fiercely argued pacifism was ahead of his time, and forms some of his most powerful work.
This selection of Milne’s articles, spanning over four decades of his life from 1910 to 1952, are collected for the first time in this volume, including his passionately argued writings on pacifism. The writings demonstrate his trademark wit, varied genius, little-known political views, and nostalgia for a lost era.