Matthew Parris Books

A collection of invective and wit by Times columnist Matthew Parris, this title is a most outrageous and most substantial collection of insults ever compiled, digging deeper into the realms of slander and abuse than ever before.

A modern classic of travel and adventure. INCA KOLA is the funny, absorbing account of Matthew Parris's fourth trip to Peru, on a bizarre holiday which takes him among bandits, prostitutes, peasants and riots. He and his three companions seem to head into trouble, not away from it, and he describes the troubles, curiosities and wonders they meet with the spell-binding fascination of a traveller relating adventures over the campfire. 'A backpacker's classic: atmospheric, touching, instructive and compulsively readable' THE TIMES

Drawn from the National Archives and from Freedom of Information requests these dispatches make up another volume of entertaining and illuminating stories from the diplomatic bag

While presenting Great Lives on Radio 4, Matthew Parris noticed a trend in the lives of the exceptional men and women the programme covered: many of them had been marked by extreme trauma and deprivation. They seemed to have succeeded not only in spite of their backgrounds, but perhaps even because of them. Charlie Chaplin spent much of his childhood in a south London workhouse, while Ada Lovelace was paralysed at the age of thirteen. Edward Lear was the last of twenty-one children, and suffered from severe epilepsy and depression, and Coco Chanel was abandoned by her father in a freezing-cold church orphanage. Yet they would all grow up to be not just successful, but to create paradigm shifts in their fields, and create work that still influence our lives today. As Matthew Parris brings each individual's story to life in this original and compelling study, it becomes clear that we must rethink the origins of success, as well as the legacy of trauma.

In this highly revealing, entertaining and salutary expedition into the moral swamps of British politics, award-winning columnist and broadcaster Matthew Parris presents the low side of high office.

A frank autobiography by "The Times" columnist and ex-politician Matthew Parris. His childhood was spent on a variety of different countries as his engineer father moved jobs; Rhodesia, Cyprus, the Middle East and Jamaica. After Cambridge and Yale, he joined the Conservative central office at roughly the same time (aged 26) he discovered he was gay. He worked for Michael Dobbs, Chris Patten, and Mrs Thatcher (who famously fired him), before entering parliament himself. Part participant, part bystander, Matthew Parris describes what it was like to be so close to the centre and remain an outsider.

When leaving a foreign posting, Britain's ambassadors were encouraged to write a valedictory despatch until the practice was abolished in 2006. This title includes reports from foreign posts that are indiscreet and funny.

A totally up-to-date compendium of the sharpest, wittiest and downright rudest insults in human history

Zábavné a poutavé líčení autorovy čtvrté cesty do Peru, během které se dostal mezi lupiče, prostitutky a obyčejné rolníky a dokonce zde zažil přepadení. On a jeho tři společníci jako by přitahovali mrzutosti. Popisuje zvláštnosti, divy i nepříjemnosti, se kterými se setkali, s humorem a s nadhledem zkušeného cestovatele.