Blott on the Landscape Hb [Hardcover]

Tom Sharpe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 1999

Sir Giles Lynchwood, millionaire property developer and Tory MP, is determined to see a motorway driven through the ancestral home of his spouse, Lady Maud. As local opposition grows, the MP is devoured by lions, and Lady Maud marries her gardener, Blott.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This farcical 1975 novel pits the good-hearted Lady Maude against the diabolical Sir Giles, who plans to ruin the local countryside by constructing a highway that will serve little purpose other than lining his pockets. The fight against bureaucracy makes for deft comedy.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his national service in the Marines before moving to South Africa in 1951, where he did social work before teaching in Natal. He had a photographic studio in Pietermaritzburg from 1957 until 1961, and from 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. He is the author of sixteen bestselling novels, including Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape, which were serialised on television, and Wilt, which was made into a film. In 1986 he was awarded the XXIIIeme Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret, and in 2010 he was awarded the inaugural BBK La Risa de Bilbao Prize. He is married and divides his time between Cambridge, England, and northern Spain.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: William Heinemann (September 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0436204959
• ISBN-13: 978-0436204951
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,611,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the few authors that REALLY make me laugh, July 25, 2001

By 

F. G. Hamer "MadManxMan" (Isle of Man) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blott on the Landscape (Paperback)

Tom Sharpe, Christopher Brookmyre, P.J. O'Rourke, Stephen Fry, P.G.Wodehouse - they all fall into the category of authors who REALLY make me laugh. If you mix up Billy Connelly and John Cleese, you'll get the idea. In Blott on the Landscape (which was turned into a BBC television series), Sharpe's humour is as sharp as ever (pun intended) and his characterizations are an absolute scream. Of course, it helps if you appreciate British humour which, at times, can be quite black. (A woman getting a lion to eat her own husband?)

Tom Sharpe's 'Wilt' books were comical enough but, in Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue, he excels even his own high standards of comic writing.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great title, great book, October 9, 2000

By 

"absentwithoutleave" (melbourne, vic Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blott on the Landscape (Paperback)

This is the first Tom Sharpe I read, and it just seems so much better that the others...I first saw the t.v. series, and was even more impressed by the book. I loved eveything about it, the plot, the exagerrated characters, the way everything fits together at the end. I was a bit disturbed that I could laugh so much about a woman deliberately letting a lion eat her (thoroughly horrible and worthless) husband, but this is the mad world that Tom Sharpe takes you to. Ther way the betrayed wife should become best friend and ally with her husbands mistress is just hysterical! My other favourite character was the poor,bureacratically challenged head of the motorway planning authourity who had none! A great book to escape into.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extremely funny,laugh out loud and roll on the floor,book, March 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Blott on the Landscape (Paperback)

This book is one of the funniest books I have ever read. It introduces a series of characters, from self-serving politicians to their innocent victims (his wife, in one case) and people who work for them, especially Blott.
An MP who married money and land wants an excuse to sell it for redevelopment. His constituents do not want it redeveloped, and neither does his wife, so he must appear to be against development while conniving to ensure that the government will proceed. His wife, and a longtime servant (who went there as a World War 2 POW) contrive ever more outrageous defences, ending in a military assault with heavy
weapons.
I have never found an American author as funny as this, and hope someone will recommend one to me.