A Great, Silly Grin: The British Satire Boom Of The 1960s

by Humphrey Carpenter

A Great, Silly Grin opens at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival, where a staggeringly inspired satirical revue called Beyond the Fringe startled a public steeped in the polite, bland banality of the 1950s. From there it is a short trip to the coffee bars of London, where the appearance of a scruffy yellow pamphlet calling itself Private Eye overturned the way Britons looked at their world. The apotheosis of the satire boom, and the progenitor of so many American comedy acts, was the groundbreaking BBC television program "That Was the Week That Was," which combined elements of sketch comedy and evening-news broadcast to produce something essential, hilarious, and, on occasion, scandalous. Humphrey Carpenter's history of this tumultuous and exciting era introduces us not only to the people involved in its creation--Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Michael Frayn, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, and David Frost--but also their routines and sketches.

Genres: Humor, History

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster. He is known especially for his biographies of J.R.R. Tolkien and other members of the literary society the Inklings. He won a Mythopoeic Award for his book The Inklings in 1982.

Reviews

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

American Monty Python fans will be interested. The history of Brit satire revolutionized comedy

[Fenixbird SandS]

Remember many of these great fun British comedies...Faulty Towers was 1 of my favorites! My current favorite is "As Times Goes By" starring none other than Judy Dench

[Benedict Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

The impact of "Beyond the Fringe" on the sixties... in particular TW3.

[Shane]

I picked this up from a Borders sale over a decade ago. One of these days, I will read it.