Paul Merton's Alternative History of the Twentieth Century

by Paul Merton

Since the start of the century, every important political meeting, every sporting fixture and every dustman's strike has been captured on camera. Many photographs have been taken to record these events, but in presenting them as true accounts, they haven't been very funny. Paul Merton aims to rectify this by subjecting photographs from the great moments of our time to his own interpretation of events

Genres: Humor, Comedy

95 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Andrew Ives · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's quite a decent premise for a comedy book to use a collection of oddball b&w photos as a chronology of the 20thC with a dash of Photoshopping Paul into several pictures, and as it was written in 1993, the part spanning 1993-2000 had to be completely invented. At 96 pages, this is a short book, and occupied mostly with photos, so the text is fairly brief and the decades fly by. However, the comedy element is rather too slight, reading more like surreal lunacy than actual comedy. I think I smirked twice (at the caption in German, and the Al Jolson bit), but the rather sick JFK part quickly put a stop to that. Personally, I think this would've benefitted from being maybe 50 pages longer, with more photos that help weave some sort of thread across the decades and some more imaginative Photoshop work. As it is, it's just about adequate for a very boring bus journey. 1.5/5