The Thoughts of Peter Simple : Extracts from 'Way of the World' Column in the 'Daily Telegraph', 1969-1971

This new collection of extracts from the Daily Telegraph "Way of the World" column covers the period from May 1969 to May 1971. Peter Simple's various styles of writing — serious, semi-serious, satirical, fantastical, nonsensical and unclassifiable — are all represented.

So are most of his well-known characters, from the Leftist thinkers and avant garde self-publicists of Hampstead to the corrupt councillors and opinion poll-maddened housewives of Stretchford; the motoring fanatics of the gin-and-tonic belt, led by J. Bonington Jagworth and the Rev. John Goodwheel (the "Apostle of the Motorways"); and the secular theologians of Dr. Spacely-Trellis's Bevindon.

The period covered by the book takes in such developments as the new outbreak of trouble in Ireland, the fall of the Labour government and advent of the Conservatives, the growth and consolidation of the "permissive society" and the moral and physical devastation of England — events and tendencies on which Peter Simple turns his ironical, nostalgic and sometimes angry eye.

With numerous illustrations by Michael ffolkes