I was drawn into this totally crazy and totally truthful narrative. I just love it. The writing is immaculate. I weigh and believe every sentence, however surreal. To me, it all makes sense. It’s a brilliant insight into fascist thinking. And the images effortlessly support a narrative that is way beyond a historian’s reach. I’m enjoying every page… it just gets richer, more complex, more truthful.

 

Michael Hirst

Screenwriter/producer – Elizabeth, The Tudors, Vikings

Product details

• Original Concept: Alan Mason

• Author: Alan Mason

• Photographer: David Williams

• Design: Barrie Tullett

• Format: Paperback

• Size: 210 x 210mm

• Publisher: The Caseroom Press

• Publication Date: Summer 2023

• ISBN: 978-1-905821-40-2

• Price £20

• Available from: Alan Mason (via bigcartel)

Book description

It was obvious what had happened and the price that the comedian had paid for his incessant chatter. Necks craned to see it and the dullest eye confirmed it. “Dead,” said a man in a grey cap. “Knife in the back,” said another.

The Fuhrer was adamant about this. He wasn’t condoning slackness or any lowering of standards, but the good Nazi must be willing to take his share of ribbing; that is if he wanted to be a part of the world, and not stand outside it, which was always the temptation.

She was looking up at a poster on the wall: a colourful representation of the bowler-tipping clowns as their hands reached out and an invitation was extended to join them in the fun that was hinted at in the brace of balloons that bobbed above them and occasionally drifted over their faces

There was one occasion, and he smiled just to think of it – the machine gunning of a circus troupe who had been guilty of harbouring a member of the resistance: twenty or so in total, sympathisers to a man including several clowns in costume, some still clutching their buckets and horns in their pokey hats and red noses which it would have taken a heart of stone or battle-hardened individual not to find amusing.

“Men!” she’d said and started to laugh: a light sound, which always surprised people, and a trilling that might have come from a valley in the Schwarzwald but which stopped abruptly after a few seconds as if a threat had been detected or the joke had proved to be less funny than she’d expected.

Could a light comedy be made from such material? The book had many amusing sections – at least in Mrs Simpson’s reading of it – and he smiled at the thought of certain scenes and how much of the original he could afford to retain if he wasn’t to bankrupt the studio or offend unnecessarily, which to be honest he’d had his fill of.

The fate of The Magazine has always been uncertain.  Can it survive? we are asked on an almost daily basis, and we reply as if a copy had been lifted from a stand or counter only to be replaced a few seconds later or passed over for something more eye-catching: it’s touch and go.