Jean Rook's reply "I am certainly not a thinking man's Anna Raeburn, so you must solve your own problems.

Donaldson's ghastly creation wrote outrageous, threatening, scurrilous and outlandish letters to public figures, praising, insulting or attempting to bribe them. I love this book and his laugh out style at trying to rankle celebrities and people in the public eye.He later remembered that "sex, whether in company or not, has been the only department in life in which I have demanded from anyone taking part the very highest standards of seriousness. His letters, full of alleged scandals and hanky panky, are taken perfectly seriously by their recipients whose responses are as funny as Root's own rantings. The cheek and audacity of Henry Root leaps off the page and each anecdote is funnier and more preposterous than the last. M Godding Books Ltd is an internet book business running from Wiltshire and sending books all over the world every working day. 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.

He completed his National Service in the Royal Navy in the late 1950s, reaching the rank of Sub-Lieutenant. 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. 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. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

The letters aren’t really dated, with the exception of certain BBC television stars and the one to the South African Ambassador.

com, who sent a letter to all US senators, posing as a child and asking them for their favourite joke. You Cannot Live As I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The thoroughly disgraceful life and times of Willie Donaldson, Terence Blacker, Ebury Press, 2007, pp. Donaldson lived at 139 Elm Park Mansions on Park Walk, Chelsea, London SW10, from which address all the Root letters were sent. When he hits a target full on, or when the target responds with good grace or a sense of humour, it's hilarious, however.Donaldson's third marriage, in 1986, was to Cherry Hatrick, who survived him; they separated six months after their marriage. His experiences there formed the basis of his first novel, Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen (1975).

This single volume brings together "The Henry Root Letters" and "The Further Letters of Henry Root". He was educated at Winchester College (where he first met Julian Mitchell) and Magdalene College, Cambridge. The sender of these letters – a cantankerous crusader against pornography and modernity, and for hanging and Mrs. 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.This book is a compendium of actual letters which the author wrote to all kinds of people of note - all from his persona of some kind of hard core petite bourgeoise British citizen. Not only have so many of the people approached here faded from the memory that one can't quite remember why they were laughable, but some of the attitudes verge on bullying and prejudice in a way that's now well beyond the bounds of acceptability by today's mores. You Cannot Live as I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The Thoroughly Disgraceful Life and Times of Willie Donaldson. Published in 1980, what would Henry Root of the wet fish emporium make of the A to Z listers of today. Edna Welthorpe was a prudish middle-aged housewife who was strongly opposed to her creator Joe Orton's plays.