Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings

by Craig Brown

From “one of the funniest writers in Britain—wise, clever, hilarious, and a national treasure” (Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones’s Diary) comes this delightful book of “101 ingeniously linked encounters between the famous and the infamous” [The Observer (London) Best Books of the Year]. Can you imagine more unlikely meetings than these: Marilyn Monroe and Frank Lloyd Wright; Sergei Rachmaninoff and Harpo Marx; T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx; Madonna and Martha Graham; Michael Jackson and Nancy Reagan; Tsar Nicholas II and Harry Houdini; Nikita Khrushchev and Marilyn Monroe? They all happened. Craig Brown tells the stories of 101 such bizarre encounters in this witty, original exploration into truth-is-stranger-than-fiction.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Essays, Humor, Biography Memoir, Historical

384 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2012

About the author

Craig Edward Moncrieff Brown (born 23 May 1957, Hayes, Middlesex) is a British critic and satirist from England, probably best known for his work in British magazine Private Eye.

Reviews

[Peter Boyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book operates on an intriguing premise - it contains 101 chance encounters with various cultural figures of the 20th century. It begins with John Scott Ellis running over Adolf Hitler and ends with Hitler having tea with the Duchess of Windsor. Each piece is 1,001 words long and the stories daisy-chain, one after the other (the second tale describes a Scott Ellis rendezvous with Rudyard Kipling). In between, there are entertaining and unlikely meetings with some intriguing titles - Phil Spector Pulls A Gun On Leonard Cohen, Francis Bacon Heckles HRH Princess Margaret, Oscar Wilde Loses His Nerve With Marcel Proust.

The tone is humorous and many amusing anecdotes are told along the way. Plenty of the stories caught me by surprise - I was fascinated by the tale of George Lazenby's disastrous appearance on the talk show of forgotten TV presenter Simon Dee, and how Harry Houdini once impressed Theodore Roosevelt with a magic trick. The problem is that some of the stories are much more interesting the others, and at times the pieces were too short, leaving me unsatisfied. But it's a terrific idea for a book, and an easy read - one that you can dip in and out of and learn something interesting about two celebrities you might never have put together.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Loved the idea of this book. Famous people meeting and being linked in a “6-degrees of separation” way across the space & time. And, I have a fondness for English authors. I was also particularly impressed when I read in the (long) forward that in keeping with the theme of 101 linked famous people, each person’s story was exactly 1001 words.

Each story of two people meeting is about 3 pages long (sometimes longer due to extensive footnotes) and denoted as a chapter. The short chapter breaks made it feel like a fast read and kept me reading long after I had actually lost interest.

Ultimately, I found the stories uninteresting. Some were literally stories about people bumping into each other on the street. Even if the two people are celebrities, that isn’t really a compelling story.

I must say too that the author is basically recycling rumors and urban myths in this book. If his stories are to be believed, every famous person is ruined in some way. Bad behavior, drug & alcohol abuse, wanton sexual experimentation and anti-social behavior is rampant. (Not in a juicy gossip way, but in a depraved/depressing way.) Many of the celebrities I wasn’t very familiar with, but this book tarnished the images of the ones I did know and like.

The author doesn’t make many moral judgements. This feels weird when he is writing about Hitler - who is probably treated the best of the celebrities! But, he uncovers and puts forth many rumored acts of irresponsibility and insanity. In the end, because of the author’s deadpan reporting-style and the linked nature of the book, it just left me feeling like everyone in the world was depraved in some way. Not a pleasant feeling. This book depressed me.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun “literary parlor game” of a book, with its chain of famous figures and their fortuitous meetings. Amongst my favorites, simply because of how bizarre they are, are two involving the Marx Brothers.

In 1931 the Marx brothers were staying in Los Angeles; Harpo just happened to be in a bungalow adjacent to Rachmaninoff. He was desperate to do his own musical practice on the harp, but his neighbor would persist in banging away at a piano. Harpo found out who his famous neighbor was and began a campaign to drive him out, playing the first four bars of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor at top volume on the harp, over and over, until Rachmaninoff requested to move to another bungalow. Six years later, in A Day at the Races, Harpo got his revenge by butchering the piece again on a gradually disintegrating piano.

My other favorite Marx Brothers moment is a meeting between Groucho and T.S. Eliot, who bore each other a strong mutual admiration. They finally met at Eliot’s home in 1964. Groucho was determined to talk poetry and Shakespeare; Eliot to talk comedy. The conversation did not go well.

There are other great meetings between literary lions: Hemingway and Ford Madox Ford (as chronicled in A Moveable Feast), Kipling and Twain, and so on. Also striking is the short distance between two historical figures, with only one linking character: for instance, Helen Keller can be linked to Madonna through Martha Graham. It makes history feel surprisingly short, and individual lives reassuringly long.

Mustn’t forget my favorite moment of the whole book: the meeting between James Dean and Alec Guinness, who was known for his sixth sense about things. Guinness warned Dean not to get in the flash new car he’d bought; if he did he’d be dead within the week. A week later Dean was in a fatal car crash. Spooky stuff.

[Kathrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

We’ll begin our journey in 1931. Billionaire teen-playboy John Scott-Ellis has failed out of Eton College, and after frittering his time on one of his family’s farms in Kenya (one of many estates they own around the world), has been sent off to Munich for the purpose of learning a foreign language. His first act in Germany is to purchase a fiery red Fiat, which he proceeds to race all over town, with his host, Haupt. Pappenheim, tucked in the passenger seat. In the center of town he slows down a bit to make a right turn. He fails to see a man crossing the lane. There is a sudden crunch.
But there is little cause for worry, as the pedestrian heaves himself from the ground and approaches the driver with a smile. A nearby policeman has failed to witness the incident, and the pedestrian acknowledges that he’s suffered no real damage. All three men shake hands and wish each other well.
“I don’t suppose you know who that was?” asks Haupt. Pappenheim.
“Of course I don’t, who is he?”
“Well, he is a politician with a party and he talks a lot. His name is Adolph
Hitler."
As years progress, Scott-Ellis remembers this encounter, and later ruminates, “For a few seconds, perhaps, I held the history of Europe in my rather clumsy hands. He was only shaken up, but had I killed him, it would have changed the history of the world.”
From here, Brown traces a circular path through contemporary pop history, navigating by way of arbitrary meetings between our most infamous historical icons. Next, Scott-Ellis, as a 10-year-old, spends an afternoon with Uncle Ruddy, otherwise known as Rudyard Kippling. And so on, through 100 memorable personalities of our last 100 years. The last essay brings us back to another meeting with Hitler, bringing us full circle. On top of that artful design, Brown has placed another constraint, that each essay contain exactly 1001 words, making the entire text exactly 101,101 words long. Acknowledgments, prefacing quotes, book description and author’s biography all contain exactly 101 words each. (He does skew the count by admitting plentiful footnotes when interesting asides could not be ignored).*
To read this book is an exercise in flexibility, as no personality behaves as we might expect, and perhaps this is quite intentional. These incidents are delightful in their unpredictability, freeing the reading of history from a tight chronology. We are ping-ponged all over the 20th century, and view our most notable icons through a backstage peephole, as few of these meetings were staged for the public, but were documented mostly through first-hand accounts of other lucky and intimately involved witnesses. The downside is, if one is only passably acquainted with a celebrity, one might not recognize them at all without their stage-face. I’ve learned I have a deficiency in my knowledge of the Royal Family, especially pre-Princess Di, and the popular British chat shows of the ’60’s have eluded me altogether (Brown is British, and first published this to the British market.) But Americans people the work in droves, especially with leanings towards Hollywood film stars, authors, and presidents. And Brown’s bibliography covers lifetimes of provocative reading, referencing classic texts, as well as memoir and biographies of very recent vintage. I recommend reading this with internet access at hand, as you will constantly be tempted to view the artifact, hear the song, or even witness the historical meeting itself archived on YouTube.
A note on genre: This title covered the requirement in my Resources for Adults class for “non-fiction,” with the full acknowledgment that non-fiction is indeed too broad a category to label as one genre, but that time did not allow for us to sample the myriad choices available under this umbrella. At the time, I had completed three works of non-fiction -- Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald, and Don’t Judge a Book by Its Lover by Lauren Leto, and this one. I chose to write on Brown’s book since I figured it had the widest appeal for a general audience. Macdonald is too philosophical and, some would say, pretentious, and certainly dated for a general audience (an awfully meta-experience suggesting Masscult to the masses), and Leto’s book fell to the other side in tone, a casual, humorous, surface appreciation of good books and the habit of reading, but lacking in meat. This one seemed to me to strike the right balance -- a history that celebrates a cultural literacy of our times, and at the same time, constructed in a whimsical fashion that allows us not to take it all too seriously. I discovered it faced-out in the history section of my bookstore, and couldn’t resist its appeal. While there are certainly weightier tomes neighboring it in the history section, I can’t think of another place in the store where it might belong. Creative non-fiction? I’m sorry D’Agata, Barnes & Noble doesn’t have such a section. Essays? Technically that follows, but essays usually read as the elaborated thoughts of one author, not as a compendium of biographies. Biography? But who’s? Yes, history is the right home for this work, and it will just have to get comfortable with being a little different from its peers.

*This review contains exactly 928 words. This counting thing is too hard. Will someone please comment exactly 72 words so this review will make the count?

[Donna Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bizarre and delightful book, so glad I won this from the Goodreads First Reads program. I have never been a person to be impressed by celebrities just because they're celebrities, they actually have to do something impressive and I'm just as impressed when anyone does anything impressive, or not depending on the circumstances, intentions, back story, day, mood, etc. That being said this charmingly dysfunctional friendship bracelet of close encounters of the weird and wild kind through recent history is a fascinating, witty, and rutted ride.
Some examples that kept me page-turning: Adolf Hitler is Knocked Down by John Scott-Ellis, August 22, 1931; George Ivanovich Gurdjieff Cooks Sauerkraut for Frank Lloyd Wright June 1934; Sarah Miles Fails to be Excited by Terence Stamp January 1961; Geoffrey Fisher is Photographed by Roald Dahl Summer 1931; Charlie Chaplin Plays Straight Man to Groucho Marx July 14th, 1937 and Groucho Marx Wants to be Taken Seriously by TS. Eliot June 1964 to name a few. If you find the titles intriguing, imagine the actual stories themselves. Celebrities are people and whether chance meetings or friendships people bungle along really well or horribly because personalities match or clash.
I had a time machine how cool to be watch: Grouch Marx and T.S. Eliot, or Helen Keller and Martha Graham, or Salvador Dali and Sigmund Freud, or Janis Joplin and Patti Smith, or Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain, or Harry Houdini and Theodore Roosevelt, or H.G. Wells and Josef Stalin, and the list flows, come on, just to be that fly on those walls even briefly, almost worth what your feet would be covered in, er, maybe not. Thank you Mr. Brown for the awesome and humbling stroll through time; I have a feeling this book goes on my shelf to be revisited for a smile, laugh, or merely pondering my place in the universe.

[F.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s an interesting bauble of a Christmas book. The superb British humourist Craig Brown writes up 101 one on one encounters between the great and the good (as well as the not so great and the not so good), to shine a torch onto the darker – and probably somewhat inconsequential – corners of history. Each of these meetings follows on from the one before and clearly the more incongruous they are, the better Brown likes them. So we have Frank Lloyd Wright designing a house for Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe wearing her tightest and sexiest dress for Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev having a stand up row with Labour politician George Brown, George Brown provoking a different stand-up row with Eli Wallach on the night JFK is assassinated, Eli Wallach being greeted by Frank Sinatra, Sinatra dealing with Dominick Dunne and so on.

In his satire, Brown (Craig, rather than George) is superb at the grotesque exaggeration, but here he plays it dead straight – and the result is a joy. There are 101 mini essays in this book (each of them lasting 101 words, so there is an anal quality to it) and all are amazingly entertaining and include beautiful and amusing nuggets of information. This is a book where even the footnotes are wielded with consummate skill, and one of my favourite passages occurs in those footnotes – the author briefly detailing a meeting (he was actually present at) between Anthony Burgess and Benny Hill! So I suppose that’s 102 encounters, each one very surprising but deeply amusing.

[Ilgar Adeli · Rating 3 out of 5]

اشخاصی که میشناختم ��و خوندم و لذت بخش بود ولی نچندان مفید
با خاطرات برنارد شا خیلی خندیدم😂

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really one of the most enjoyable reads I have had in a long while. A book describing 101 chance meetings, each described in exactly 1001 words, making it perfect to dip into or read in it's entirety. The random encounters lead off each other - so, for example, the first meeting is between Adolph Hitler, who is knocked down by John Scott-Ellis in 1931. This leads into John Scott-Ellis meeting Rudyard Kipling and Rudyard Kipling meeting Mark Twain, etc etc. The whole book comes full circle, ending with Hitler meeting The Duchess of Windsor.

Just about everyone is in this book - these are famous people who are truly famous, not the wannabee's of today. Everybody from the Royal family, philosophers, authors, actors and singers are represented and you will know them all: from Jackie Kennedy to Marilyn Monroe, Paul McCartney to Frank Sinatra, Rasputin to Stalin. Some of the encounters are funny, others bizarre, some touching. There is Michael Jackson locking himself in the toilets at the White House, Andy Warhol's feud with Jackie Kennedy, Richard Burton misbehaving at a dinner party with the Duchess of Windsor, a creepy premonition at a meeting between Alec Guinness and James Dean, Evelyn Waugh giving out a public persona which says, "I am bored, you are frightened," Frank Sinatra being greeted with the words, "Make yourself at home, Frank - hit someone!" and H.G. Wells asserting that Stalin "owes his position to the fact that no one is afraid of him," which leads on to the chilling death of Maxim Gorky. This really is a gem of a book and would make a great present, as the reader is sure to be intersted in at least some of the people included. Fantastic stuff, not serious but entertaining and highly enjoyable.

[Parham · Rating 3 out of 5]

توجه: لطفا برای درست دیدن این متن کلیک راست کرده، جهت متن را تغییر دهید. باتشکر!


کتاب اصلی (one on one) شامل 101 برخورد تاریخی بین افراد مختلف است که در متن ترجمه شده (به گفته مترجم) به علت ناشناخته بودن بعضی از اشخاص یا "مشکل آفرین" بودن برخورد آن ها فقط 36 تا از این برخوردها آمده!
گرچه در پشت کتاب به نقل از جولیان بارنز نوشته شده "کتابی که بیش از همه چیز مرا خنداند" اما شاید در هنگام خواندن این کتاب حداکثر چند بار لبخندی ملایم بر لبتان بنشیند.
اما ارزش کتاب برای خود من از لحاظ اطلاعات تاریخی (هر چند شاید بتوان آنها را حاشیه ای نامید) بود!برخورد ولز با استالین ، پروست و جویس ، مریلین مونرو و خروشچف و ... .

تنها مشکلی که داشتم این بود که بعضی جاها درست متوجه منظور بعضی جملات نمی شدم: این که عیب از من بوده یا جناب کامشاد یا خود نویسنده ، نمی دانم.

[Clare Kirwan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because of its sheer richness, it’s taken me ages to read this fascinating series of mini biographies based on 101 true encounters between the famous. The Queen Mother meets TS Eliot, Terence Stamp meets Ted Heath, Paul McCartney meets Elvis, who meets Nixon etc etc. Encounters in swanky hotels, palaces and country lanes are by turns bitchy, enlightening, underwhelming, historical, disturbing and the author plumps up each one with colourful background detail and juicy gossipy asides. Look out for this!

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do not understand the rapturous critical acclaim this book received, with its dominance of every book of the year list. The book follows unlikely famous people who meet other famous people who then in turn meet other famous people. In general the famous are disappointed in these meetings and somewhat interestingly the passage of time makes their accounts of such meetings even more negative.

There were two funny bits out of this book. The most scathing father assessment of his son "I enclose John's reports. As you will see they are uniformly deplorable... I am afraid he seems to have all his fathers failings and none of his very few virtues. Of course we may have overrated him and he is really only a rather stupid and untidy boy...I must say the lack of ambition and general wooziness of character is really rather disappointing. Try and shake the little brute up." The second funny bit is even more throwaway, an A. Sheekman, a scriptwriter, for the Marx brothers who plays Cecil DeMille's film The Crusades over and over again just to hear Loretta Young say "ya gotta save Christianity Richard, ya gotta!". The last bit has made me giggle for days. The rest of the book not so much.

[Al · Rating 2 out of 5]

Craig Brown's "Hello, Goodbye, Hello" is based on a clever concept--follow the meetings of famous people with one of the participants linked to a meeting with another famous person; it's an interconnection that can often yield surprises such as Groucho Marx meeting T.S. Eliot. While it comes as no surprise that the famous often don't live up to their public personas, who knew how insecure and shallow most of them are? Few reputations leave this book unscathed. it's a dubious honor as to which personality was the most disagreeable human being, but Cecil Beaton, Noel Coward and Evelyn Waugh stand out among a motley bunch. The reprises are written with a nod to fill in the gaps for non-U.K. readers. The book cites its sources, at least; its chief attribute may be Inspiring the reader to further explore the memoirs and biographies that Brown culled for this diverting yet shallow entertainment.

[Chris Neal · Rating 1 out of 5]

it's an interesting concept, no doubt...but I am highly skeptical of the anecdotes and tales in this one. The author claims a lot of exchanges and conversations took place between two well known celebrities that push the limits of my trust. I remain dubious that half of the meetings actually went the way that this book says they did, and think it's mostly either exaggerated or written for fun.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun, little way to pass the time and the stories in it are highly amusing, I just feel they aren't factual.

[Bonnie Carruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A delightful book with an English sense of humor Everything in the book is documented. Nothing is invented. when accounts of the same meeting differ, as the always do, the author has sided with the most likely. To lend a pattern to a book that revolves around chance, and to insert order into the haphazard the author describes each of the 101 meetings in 1,001 words.The footnotes are as delicious as the meetings described.

[John Lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're a big fan of trivia and surprising anecdotes, then this is a pretty great book. The chance encounters, like Alec Guiness meeting James Dean and telling him not to drive his new care, are fun to read.

[Sarah83 sbookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein tolles Buch, welches einem einen Einblick gibt, welche Personen sich in der Vergangenheit wirklich kannten und wie ihr Verhältnis zu einander war.
Wer Biographien liebt, unbedingt lesen. 🖒

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Preparing to write a review of Craig Brown's 'A Voyage Round the Queen' I noticed that I had marked this book as read ten years ago in 2015. This astounded me because I could not remember anything about it and has made me pause before writing my review of 'A Voyage Round the Queen'. I can understand forgetting a book, but when I retain not the slightest memory, not even after reading the synopsis, I have to ask myself was there anything worthwhile there to begin with? I don't know and I doubt I will take the time to read it again to discover. I imagine it would be as satisfying as reading out-of-date magazines.

Because I don't remember anything about the book, though I am sure I enjoyed it, I am giving it three stars.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Craig Brown's insight as a humorist is that Marcel Proust lived in the same world as Simon Dee, that Churchill and Janis Joplin would have walked the same streets, might have known the same songs, or could have compared views on restaurants.

Such clashes - of our expectations more than anything else - have proved fertile ground for Brown's Private Eye diaries, his column in the Daily Mail and numerous other works.

But in One on One, he sets out to prove some of the links between unlikely pairs in a self-disciplined, almost scientific way. As he commented himself, he wanted to write a book that "played to my weaknesses".

The result is a chain of 101 meetings between famous individuals, each described in exactly 1001 words (he claims: he anyone counted?) So, starting and ending with Adolf Hitler, the book traces a circle which includes the relatively modern (Michael Jackson, Madonna, Michael Barrymore), the grand (Tsar Nicholas II, the Queen Mother), the venerable (Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud), the glamorous (Elizabeth Taylor, Charlie Chaplin) and the cool (Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol).

Each described meeting is researched from sources listed at the back, so one doesn't need to worry that he's fooling us with imagined encounters. Indeed, after a while, I found myself trying to spot a weak link between strong lines of meetings - but I couldn't find one.

Each 1001 words is a little gem in itself, with Brown skilfully giving us just enough background to fill in the context, but satisfying our gossipy interest with the tiniest details of the particular occasion he picks.

It's a strange format for a book, and at first I wondered whether it was going to prove better as individual bites than as a whole meal. Did its self-imposed structure deny it any other kind of coherence as a book? But after a while, I began to detect a subtle flow in the chapters, as they ran from Tsarist Russia to Hollywood, and thence to sixties Britain, each with its own set of characters and social mores. It is in fact, a wonderful education in politics, literature and history, where one's accidental familiarity with one subject quickly gives way to ignorance about an equally well-known character.

Above all, it is funny, sometimes in the kind of details that dignified celebrities want forgotten, but also in more subtle ways: would we ever otherwise have heard how H.G.Wells spent three hours sucking up to Stalin, concluding: "I have never met a man more candid, fair and honest"?

One on One could become a classic: a 1066 and All That which somehow finds its way into the national consciousness as its reputation spreads. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying it, and its rigid organisation gives it a uniqueness that might just be a passport to immortality.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Have you ever fallen into a Wikipedia rabbit hole, where you start out reading about, say, Winston Churchill, and an hour later, after having clicked from entry to entry, find yourself learning about the medicinal qualities of mulberries? This book is sort of like that: reading about one historical figure who met another historical figure, and then that second figure who encountered yet another... And on. Which is a pretty interesting concept for a book, but I think that it suffers both from many of the anecdotes being too brief (Craig Brown chose 101 anecdotes and related each one of them in 1,001 words [he even goes so far as to keep his acknowledgments to a strict 101 words]), and from there simply being too many of them to get through. 101 anecdotes is a lot, and some of them are significantly more interesting than others. In fact, in some chapters, the footnotes were nearly as long as the chapters themselves- evidence of how much research Brown put into this book, and how many fascinating bits of information he found about some of his subjects- and I admit that after hopping about so much from subject to subject I hardly remember any of them.

[Doreen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmm, a 2-star rating says a lot for those who know me! I was waiting to read this book when I noticed that a coworker, Sandy, was reading it. I asked her if she was enjoying it so far and her response was, "...yes, well...I mean, you'll see when you read it...not what I expected...". So, I'll be direct...this book was ONLY 'okay'.

I like the author's 101 gimmick, it's cute. Unfortunately, the meetings/stories are not very remarkable. Sure, the one with Hitler could have altered the course of history, but not many of the other stories are as consequential. This is an okay book if you read it one story at a time over a long period. It's better to enjoy one or two stories occasionally. Trying to read it from cover to cover without interruption would prove boring and impossible for many of us. The stories simply aren't "remarkable/fabulous/titillating/interesting" enough to 'hook' a reader. At least that is the case with me.

[Whitley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful surprise! I read a review of this is the UK Spectator, and I could not be happier that I bought it from Amazon.co.uk. (It is not published in the US). It consists of short anecdotes about meetings--often moving, always enlightening and revealing--between famous people. For example, did you know or ever even imagine that a young English aristocrat knocked Adolf Hitler down with his car in 1931--and regretted for the rest of his life that the then minor German politican was not killed? The book is just full of stories like that. The meeting between Helen Keller and Martha Graham is unforgettably moving, a glorious three pages of exquisite human drama. I'm in love with this book!

[Maureen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I heard about this book on NPR and it sounded fascinating from the interview with the author. However, it is not well written at all. The most interesting encounters were the ones discussed in the interview and compared to that, the book was very disappointing. In addition, Amis uses some words (not very difficult ones, at that) that he obviously doesn't know the meaning of, which really bothered me. I had to make myself finish this one, mostly because I bought it right after hearing the program, but it was difficult to finish as it wasn't that interesting or entertaining.

[Vtlozano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Groucho Marx met T.S. Elliot. T.S. Elliot bored the young Queen Elizabeth at a reading. And so it goes in this daisy chain of the famous having met the famous, stretching back to Tolstoy and reaching forward to Madonna. Craig Brown is dry and under-stated in sketching out these collisions of fabulosity. But what sticks with you after is how the well-known live in a 'No Exit' kind of purgatory where they move in the same circles feeling deeply uncomfortable with each other, under-estimating and over-estimating mutual regard. Entertaining.

[Andreea · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My work as a humorist relies on distortion. However, I have tried to keep this book on the straight and narrow: everything in it is documented. When accounts of the same meeting differ, as they almost always do, I have sided with the most likely. To lend order to a book that revolves around chance, I have described each of the 101 meetings in exactly 1001 words, which makes One on One 101,101 words long. The acknowledgements, prefacing quotes, author's blurb, book's blurb and list of my other books each consist of 101 words, as does this note”

[Wastrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great conceit, and an amusing and educational execution. Suffers a bit from repetition and lack of direction - may be better read chapter-by-chapter, now-and-then, rather than in one go.

Fuller thoughts here.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series of anecdotes was entertaining and witty, but not very memorable. It was glossy - shiny and shimmery, but brittle, like glass. The NY Times made much of the fact that each story is exactly 1,001 words in length, but, in my opinion, the author cheated by adding extensive footnotes to many stories.

[Virginia]

Very interesting idea...but... Perhaps if the author hadn't committed himself to 1001 words for each encounter... a little editing maybe. Sometimes he seems to go on just to fill those words, usually not to the benefit of who he is talking about. Yes famous people are human but are they all insecure whiners? Really sort of mean...

[Cher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing anecdotes from encounters of notable twentieth century figures: Hitler meets John Scott-Ellis (if only the car had been moving faster and more forcefully), Mark Twain and Helen Keller, Martha Graham and Madonna, Nancy Reagan and Andy Warhol, James Dean and Alec Guiness, Marcel Proust and James Joyce, and on and on.. This is best read dipping in here and there than in a straight shot.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute gem of a book, one of those ones that you lend to people and keep losing track of as a consequence. Brilliant idea that is superbly executed as Brown reconstructs all the encounters with voluminous research but then writes all up with a light touch. So pleased to see that he has had a huge hit with his latest book about the Beatles, richly deserved.

[Self-propelled · Rating 2 out of 5]

James Joyce doesn't say much to Marcel Proust! Hemingway is nasty to Ford Madox Ford, but only behind his back! Gorky thinks Tolstoy is wonderful, but then changes his mind, we don't know why!

When two famous, interesting people meet, nothing much happens. 101 times, in 101 words each.