Book description
Last year Stephen Pile attempted to deliver a daring blow to the
success ethic that so pervades Western culture. To his dismay, The
Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures sold many copies and even became the
Sunday Times 'Humour Book of the Year.' Nothing daunted, Stephen
returns with a new selection which brings together the very best of
his original classic titles - The Book of Heroic Failures and The
Return of Heroic Failures. The heartwarming news that stays news is
that there really is no limit to what humanity can achieve, as we move
onwards and downwards to ever more immortal and breathtaking feats of
incompetence. The Not Terribly Good Book of Heroic Failures lovingly
chronicles the all-time heroes who have been so bad at things that
they shine as beacons for future generations. It is hard not to feel
boundless admiration, for example, for the fifty Mexican convicts who
dug an escape tunnel out of their jail and came up in the courtroom
where many of them had been sentenced. Or for the world's worst
tourist, who spent three days in New York believing he was in Rome.
Stephen Pile was a journalist for far too long and is the author
of The Book of Heroic Failures. He is also the Founder and President
of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain and was the Artistic
Director of the First International Nether Wallop Arts festival in
1984, which came about by accident. The next week Stephen met his
wife, had three children, became a television critic for 14 years and
hasn't been out of the house since, which is why Britain looks so
strange and changed.
