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cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/4174478
Since it’s impossible to read Partridge without hearing his voice in your head, this is a book best enjoyed in audio where, courtesy of Coogan, his pompous pronouncements and warped self-analysis take flight. As ever, the writing is atrocious in the best possible way. In Big Beacon, Partridge is in his element, which is to say swimming against the tide and convinced of his reasonableness in an increasingly bewildering world.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“It’s a shame to be leaving the BBC at a time when most of its senior roles are finally being given to supporters and donors of the Conservative party,” he notes.
Big Beacon is the third memoir from Alan Partridge, written by Steve Coogan with longstanding collaborators Neil and Rob Gibbons.
In the prologue, our protagonist explains, in excruciatingly Partridgean detail, how the book “employs a daring structure known as a dual narrative”.
While one of those narratives reveals his attempts to resuscitate his career, the other sees him “spurn the world of broadcasting for a more humble life spent restoring a dilapidated lighthouse and, in doing so … tenderly breathing new life into both the abandoned seaside building and, in a funny kind of way, my own soul.” And so, after leaving Norfolk and “emigrating” to the Kent coast, Partridge goes into battle with locals outraged at his renovation plans.
Since it’s impossible to read Partridge without hearing his voice in your head, this is a book best enjoyed in audio where, courtesy of Coogan, his pompous pronouncements and warped self-analysis take flight.
A Spy Among FriendsBen Macintyre, Bloomsbury, 12hr 30minThis gripping account of the Soviet mole Kim Philby who gave up British secrets during the cold war is read by Michael Tudor Barnes.
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