The Complete Henry Root Letters

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I love this book and his laugh out style at trying to rankle celebrities and people in the public eye. a b c "William Donaldson – Womanising satirist and novelist who squandered several fortunes on wild living". Supposedly a wet fish merchant from Fulham, he is an avatar for a lot of the to-the-right-of-Attila-the-Hun, Thatcher-supporting, mildly racist, entitled, liberal-baiting mansplaining that was de rigeur and absolutely unchallenged in the Spectator/Private Eye yachts and casinos circles that Donaldson frequented.

You Cannot Live As I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The thoroughly disgraceful life and times of Willie Donaldson.

This time around Root has written an appalling soap opera about the decline of moral standards in modern Britain and put together a new volume crammed with letters to famous actors, directors and other worthies up and down the land. Esther Rantzen doesn't come out quite so well - there's a disagreement about whether the BBC should pay Root for some unusable script material, and Rantzen sends the same response to two different letters - the first from Root praising the show, the second, again thanking him and saying how much they appreciate viewer contributions is in response to his missive which says simply, "Dear Esther, You're a fat idiot and your show's a disgrace. The letters aren’t really dated, with the exception of certain BBC television stars and the one to the South African Ambassador. Root wrote the BBC – I think Monty Python had his number, the Queen, Prince Charles, various publishing houses. H. Rochester Sneath - the fictional headmaster of the fictional British public school Selhurst, created by Humphry Berkeley.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The phenomenal success of the Henry Root books, especially the first, enabled Donaldson to resume his earlier chaotic lifestyle, and in the mid-1980s he began using crack cocaine. Henry Root, who made a fortune in wet fish, spent ten years in correspondence with powerful and famous people across Britain.

The sender of these letters – a cantankerous crusader against pornography and modernity, and for hanging and Mrs. It is very non PC and there is a wave of guilt that I should find it amusing, but nevertheless it is a good read. Donaldson's ghastly creation wrote outrageous, threatening, scurrilous and outlandish letters to public figures, praising, insulting or attempting to bribe them. Or saying that Henry Root Junior thought Cliff Richard was working behind the makeup counter at Boots makes me think, but for "Congratulations" go he. Published in 1980, what would Henry Root of the wet fish emporium make of the A to Z listers of today.

The letters were published as The Henry Root Letters and The Further Letters of Henry Root and a compilation volume, The Complete Henry Root Letters. Donaldson's third marriage, in 1986, was to Cherry Hatrick, who survived him; they separated six months after their marriage. If further recommendation be needed, then surely there is none finer than Glenda Slagg/Linda Lee Potter: "About as funny as pushing somebody fully clothed into a swimming pool. Donaldson lived at 139 Elm Park Mansions on Park Walk, Chelsea, London SW10, from which address all the Root letters were sent.The cheek and audacity of Henry Root leaps off the page and each anecdote is funnier and more preposterous than the last. Together, they provide a powerful impression of what life must have been like in late-Seventies Britain for a retired trader in wet fish, seeing his country overrun by lesbians, lefties and other losers.

Root first came to my attention more years ago than I care to admit when I was in Denmark and saw the televised version of Root into Europe.M Godding Books Ltd is an internet book business running from Wiltshire and sending books all over the world every working day. He completed his National Service in the Royal Navy in the late 1950s, reaching the rank of Sub-Lieutenant. In short, he was the British version of Sarah Palin – but people apparently took him seriously (with the exception of Cambridge). To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.