Saturday 31 January 2009

On not writing a book

There is a book reviewed in today's Guardian called Shakespeare on Toast, and if you look carefully you will see the paper says it is by me. Read on: 'a matey attempt to make Shakespeare relevant... Crystal, who is also an actor, paints in a lot of useful context... Crystal ends up admirably succeeding in his ambition to provide a toolbox for getting to grips with Shakespeare's plays'.

What a nice review. But people who know me must be a bit puzzled by this point. Matey? Actor? That doesn't sound quite right. And indeed, alas, no. The Guardian, once again, has lived up to its Grauniad reputation. The book was written by son Ben. You can see more about it at his website Shakespeare on Toast .

I know life is one long battle to stay ahead of your kids, but this is taking things a bit far. Ah well, maybe Ben will get his revenge one day. I expect the Guardian will assign my autobiography to him, in due course.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah well... the wonders of this complicated and confusing world. Although, the thought of newspapers containing the same embarrassing mistakes as certain websites (Wikipedia) is slightly worrying.

Unknown said...

Well, Alvin Toffler almost fourty years ago in his prophetical book "Future Shock" has made a supposition, that humankind won't be able to cope with the stream of information that would overhwhelm it. Maybe the journalist didn't even pay attention to the first name, but was well informed about your scholarly achievements. And that played a mean nasty trick on him (or her). Perhaps one day we'll be lucky to see an "n-th" edition of "Cambridge Encyclopedia", where your grandson might be one of the co-authors...