Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Haywire cover art

Haywire

By: Craig Brown
Narrated by: Craig Brown, Peter Serafinowicz, Jan Ravens, Kieran Hodgson
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £19.99

Buy Now for £19.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

On Hampstead Heath cover art
Alan Bennett: Diaries cover art
Tough Crowd cover art
Barry Cryer: Same Time Tomorrow? cover art
Oh Miriam! cover art
Erotic Vagrancy cover art
This Much Is True cover art
Sean Lock: 15 Minutes of Misery & 15 Storeys High cover art
Patrick Hamilton: Rope, Gaslight, Hangover Square and More cover art
The Smoking Diaries cover art
The Magic of My Youth cover art
Capote cover art
What Just Happened?! cover art
Alan Bennett: Untold Stories cover art
The Fall of Boris Johnson cover art
Listen to Les cover art

Summary

From the bestselling and award-winning author of Ma'am Darling and One Two Three Four, a selection of Craig Brown's finest writing collected together for the first time.

Haywire presents a survival guide to the 21st century.

The acclaimed biographer of Princess Margaret and The Beatles considers such diverse topics as gloves, outer space, the Marx Brothers, Richard Dawkins, Hitler’s hair, John Stonehouse, Katie Price, tongue-twisters, Bruce Springsteen, Harry and Meghan, Stanley Spencer, Brian Epstein, Downton Abbey, Sigmund Freud and Karl Lagerfeld’s cat.

With the full battery of the humourist's armoury – clerihews, tongue twisters, whimsy, parody, farce, satire, social observation, nonsense – Brown skewers the fads and delusions of the contemporary world.

©2022 Craig Brown (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"The most screamingly funny living writer." (Barry Humphries, Mail on Sunday)

"The greatest satirist since Max Beerbohm." (Elaine Showalter Guardian)

"Craig Brown's humour will outlive his victims. His journalism is one of the few compensations for being British now." (David Sexton, Sunday Telegraph)

What listeners say about Haywire

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

So funny!

Each chapter is different so if you don’t like one, you’ll like the next one. Never boring. My new favourite writer. Buy it now!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Superb

Craig Brown doesn’t just write funnily and intelligently, his analysis of how others write is revelatory.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A bumper (book of Brown

A great collection that showcases the breadth of the excellent Craig Brown’s writing.

Lots of satire and humour sits alongside serious musings on culture - from books to TV, often in the form of reviews.

The readers Kieran Hodgson, Jan Ravens and the amazing Peter Serafinowicz bring the articles and skits to life. But some of the articles Craig himself reads suffer from his poor audio recording setup. (Edit: Craig Brown is able to pronounce some abstruse names and words, but - deliberately? - mispronounces Idris Elba as 'Eye'-dris. Not a good look)

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A really funny audio book.

Craig Brown is one of the funniest writers this country has.
He brings everything down to some of the funniest formats that I think our "modern comedians" should follow.
I've got 2\3 publications of Craig Brown and he is one of those writers you can go back to and still laugh at his take on people and places.
As I wrote before our modern comedians could take a few leaves out of his books

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!