The World of Peter Simple: Extracts from 'Way of the World' column in The Daily Telegraph 1971-1973

This new collection of extracts from the "Way of the World" column in the Daily Telegraph covers the period from May 1971 to May 1973.

This was a time when such concepts as "the environment", "conservation" and "pollution"—so long foreshadowed in the column—began to assume the modish and often dubious forms which are reflected, along with many other contemporary concerns, in Peter Simple's satiric fantasy.

All the familiar figures of his demonology appear again: Mrs. Dutt-Pauker, the Hampstead thinker and her leftist family; the proliferating workers of the race relations industry; Dr. Spacely-Trellis, the trendy Bishop of Bevindon; King Norman and the Socialist Royal Family; wicked Squire Haggard; avant garde self-publicist Neville Dreadberg and his wife Pippa (and their new friend from the IRA, Brigadier MacGuffog); while new figures like Dr. Llewelyn Goth-Jones, the Pill-frenzied Medical Officer of Health for Stretchford, join the cast of characters from that outstandingly corrupt and property-developed Midland conurbation.

Rentacrowd, the giant consortium which supplies leftist demonstrators and howling mobs for all occasions, is more than ever active in a world where Peter Simple's most grotesque creations are by now only one narrow jump ahead of reality.

With numerous illustrations by Michael ffolkes