Saturday, July 04, 2009

Win A Useful Fiction by Patrick Hannan

My latest quiz closes at 23:59 on Tuesday 7 July. To win a copy of "A Useful Fiction" by Patrick Hannan just e-mail me the answers to the five questions below:
  1. After whom is the Barnett formula named?

  2. Who wrote: "We are bought and sold for English gold -/What a parcel of rogues in a nation"?

  3. In which year did the people of North East England vote against the establishment of a regional assembly in a referendum?

  4. Who said of Enoch Powell: "Poor Enoch! Driven mad by the remorselessness of his own logic."

  5. Which MP is currently 326th in the line of succession to the British throne.

To whet you appetite, Heresy Corner has a review of the book:

This book is more of a jaunt through the ironies of modern Britain rather than a coherent argument - which makes for an entertaining read ("a running commentary") if a slightly inconclusive one.

He's a sharp observer and has some good stories to tell. On page 91, for example, on Gordon Brown's apparent transition from dull but competent Chancellor to failing Prime Minister: "I was told by someone who knew the government intimately that, in fact, he had been useless all along but at the Treasury his more able advisers had seen to it that he didn't get into trouble".

And I enjoyed Hannan's tale of an encounter with Peter Hain, out of office following his failure properly to record campaign donations, which "felt as though I'd somehow stepped into a bereavement".

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