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COPYRIGHT 2003 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
FRONT PAGE: COVERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
by Stephane Duperray and Raphaele Vidaling Weidenfeld, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 192 ISBN 0297829718
The last review I wrote for this magazine was of The Oxford Book of Catchphrases. I moaned that, grotesquely, there was nothing by Kenneth Williams; indeed, nothing at all from Hancock's Half Hour. Explanation: an American editor who had only lived in England for about ten years. And now we have here a book on magazine covers--an alluring, juicy subject--but it does not mention Private Eye, still less reproduce any of its covers with voice-balloon captions.
You will never, perhaps, find me volunteering to be secretary of the Richard Ingrams Fan Club; but I must concede that he edited a very funny magazine, roughly even-handed in satirising the Left and the Right, and that there were hardly any dud covers (but, I gather, quite a few Pete ones). I'll add--risking investiture with the OBN--that Private Eye is still funny. So why is it left out? The book's jacket coyly gives us nil information about the writers/compilers; but their names--Stephane Duperray and Raphaele Vidaling, with the collaboration of Cecile Amara, Agnieszka Pies and Alain-Xavier Wurst--do not suggest a clique from Reigate or Tunbridge Wells. One does not want to seem xenophobic (one isn't), and obviously a cosmopolitan mix of editors should by rights give us a generously world-embracing selection; but (gulp!) no Private Eye! I ask you! Other rather flabbergasting omissions are Fleur Cowles's Flair and that adventurous,...
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