The arch-Brexiter’s tome has sales to match its awful reviews, but he’s not the first politician who’s struggled to flog a book
Let’s play a game: is this from a review of Conservative MP and arch Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg’s book The Victorians, or not? “Morally repellent”, “abysmal” and “soul-destroying”, “reads like it was written by a baboon”, “too pompous and too cliche-ridden”, and “a boring tome” full of “little more than commonplace cliches”. Answer: all but the last. That was Benito Mussolini’s zinger about Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Who knew he had it in him?
After the nation’s historians eviscerated Rees-Mogg’s 500-odd pages of pompous jingoism, it seems that the public were not even curious: The Victorians sold a dismal 734 copies in its opening week to reach the lofty heights of 379th spot on Nielsen’s UK book charts. Half of those were sold in the Midlands (15%) and London (35%), suggesting that whichever bookshop is closest to parliament had a very good week. The south-west, home to Rees-Mogg’s constituency of North East Somerset, could only account for 22 copies. Alas, milord will have to demand a higher tithe from the serfs this year.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2WdjCH0
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