The Leaky Establishment [Paperback]

David Langford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2001

THE LEAKY ESTABLISHMENT is an atomic farce whose author David Langford once worked in the gentle radioactive glow of Britain's nuclear weapons industry, and hilariously satirizes its ghastly bureaucracy from the inside. Black comedy overtakes the unfortunate defence-scientist hero Roy Tappen when a "harmless" theft of office furniture lands him with his very own doomsday nuclear stockpile at home. Chain reactions of insanely comic escapades follow, with disaster piled on disaster, leading the increasingly desperate Tappen to the borders of science fiction as he seeks a way out of the mess. With an introduction by Terry Pratchett.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Big Engine (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1903468000
• ISBN-13: 978-1903468005
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,790,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Parody of the UK nuclear weapons lab in the 1980s, December 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Leaky Establishment (Paperback)

Curses! Long after we'd abandoned hope of a reprint, and barely 12 weeks after I'd splashed out on a used - signed, no less - first edition, this imprint inexplicably appears!

Don't get me wrong: it's a pretty funny book. Set around the aptly-named "Robinson Heath" bomb lab (a blatant send-up of AWRE Aldermaston, where the author once worked), it recounts the exploits of scientist Roy Tappen who accidentally takes the fissile part of his work home one night and struggles to smuggle it back inside the fence. In the process, Langford shines the harsh light of satire on the secretive and cowering creatures of the Scientific Civil Service.

The plot is far-fetched (luckily), and the story mashes in a fair few in-jokes, such as place names, which mean that you can probably knock half a star off the rating if you haven't worked at Aldermaston and another half if you don't know the area. Shame to see the laser getting only one throwaway gag though, since it's such a multi-billion dollar save-the-earth project in the US and France now.

Langford's style a bit glib and teenaged (maybe he was still gloating at his escape?) but it rattles along quite nicely. But the best part has got to be the wonderfully succinct caricatures of inmates in UK Government labs: a must for anyone who's had to deal with them.

What's puzzling is the timing: Aldermaston was privatised in the early 1990s, so this tale isn't really a hard-hitting topical parody any more. In fact, the place is overdue for a sequel: trendy new management styles etc bred new stereotypes, and the funnier old ones, like the industrial-rate smokers, have gone. Also a pity that Langford didn't include some of the more timeless anecdotes from the "old days", such as the day the guards found that a hundred yards of the fence had been stolen, the guard who (while practising quick draws to while the night away) shot himself in the foot, the dreadful hostel "Boundary Hall" with its wing of 1950s originals still in residence (known in the 1980s as "Death Row") and which was double-glazed throughout - the month before it was demolished.

But overall, a good book. Nice to see it back in print!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Langford's best book, August 27, 2007

By 

A. Wells - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Leaky Establishment (Paperback)

This is David Langford's best book to date (and that's saying something!) With his usual wit and humour, he has accurately captured both the spirit of the Cold War and the bureaucracy of the Civil Service in the 1970s and 80s. The characters are recognisable to us all, and the situations they get into are both true to life and side-splittingly funny.

If you've already got this book, you should get it down from the shelf and re-read it. If you haven't - well, what are you waiting for?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious Nuclear Insecurity, September 1, 2007

By 

Michael Glyer (Monrovia, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Leaky Establishment (Paperback)

The Leaky Establishment is a story spun from Dave Langford's experiences working at a British nuclear research establishment in the 1970s. Protagonist Roy Tappen is like a Wooster with no Jeeves to save him as Langford turns the nuclear research center into a goldmine of laughs.

Roy Tappen borrows a filing cabinet from work to use at home and unknowingly also takes home a plutonium warhead. He spends the rest of the book trying to infiltrate the warhead back where it belongs without Security or his boss discovering it ever left the facility. Tappen soon explains why his warhead in its aluminum jacket is no more dangerous than a lot of household items. From then on Langford is free to treat the plutonium core like any of the other humorous icons whose appearance at the right moment in the story is good for a chuckle. Jokes are set up and triggered in the deft Langford style, at the pace of about a joke per paragraph.

The Leaky Establishment is invested with all the delightful characteristics of Langford's writing, the flair for lucid prose found in writers from Bob Shaw to C.S. Lewis, lots of sophisticated wordplay, and inspired leaps between high-brow and low-brow humor.