Incomplete Shakespeare: Hamlet

John Crace, creator of the Guardian's 'Digested Read' column, parodies Hamlet in a brilliantly funny reduced form, with Professor John Sutherland providing notes.

Hilarious - and all the better for those of us who know our Shakespeare back to front

Shrewd interpretations of the Bard; funny footnotes too

Perfect for anyone who struggles to understand Shakespeare ... hilarious and informative, they really bring Shakespeare to life.

John Crace (Author) 
 John Crace is the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer and author of the ‘Digested Read’ columns and he writes regularly for Grazia. He is the author of I Never Promised you a Rose Garden: A short guide to modern politics, the coalition and the general election and also Baby Alarm: A Neurotic’s Guide to Fatherhood, Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success , Harry's Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp, Brideshead Abbreviated: the Digested Read of the Twentieth Century and The Digested Twenty-first Century. He lives in London. 
 
John Sutherland (Author) 
 John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature at University College London and previously taught at the California Institute of Technology. He writes regularly for the Guardian, The Times and the New York Times, and is the author of many books including Curiosities of Literature, Is Henry V a War Criminal? (with Cedric Watts), biographies of Walter Scott, Stephen Spender and the Victorian elephant Jumbo, and The Boy Who Loved Books, a memoir.

Alas poor Yorick, he looks not at all well. 
I knew him, Horatio; 
a fellow of infinite jest, though sadly finite breath. 
Though thy gibes be still, yet still thou grins. 
I seldom saw thy teeth look quite so clean 
 
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, this is the fourth of a new collection of the Bard's greatest plays, digested to a few thousand words with invaluable side notes from John Sutherland. Funny and incredibly clever, these parodies are a joy for those who know their Shakespeare, perfect for the theatre goer needing a quick recap, and a massive relief for those just desperate to pass their English exam.

Incomplete Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet

John Crace, creator of the Guardian's 'Digested Read' column, parodies the world's favourite story of doomed love in a brilliantly funny reduced form, with Professor John Sutherland providing footnotes

The wonderful John Crace collaborating with UCL’s John Sutherland for parodic and truncated retellings of Shakespeare’s great plays.

What finer way to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death than a series of witty modern reworkings...Shakespeare reduced to 100 pages of pithy pentameter with smart side notes.

Hilarious – and all the better for those of us who know our Shakespeare back to front.

Shrewd interpretations of the Bard; funny footnotes too.

Perfect for anyone who struggles to understand Shakespeare... hilarious and informative, they really bring Shakespeare to life

John Crace (Author) John Crace is the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer and author of the ‘Digested Read’ columns and he writes regularly for Grazia. He is the author of I Never Promised you a Rose Garden: A short guide to modern politics, the coalition and the general election and also Baby Alarm: A Neurotic’s Guide to Fatherhood, Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success , Harry's Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp, Brideshead Abbreviated: the Digested Read of the Twentieth Century and The Digested Twenty-first Century. He lives in London. John Sutherland (Author) John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature at University College London and previously taught at the California Institute of Technology. He writes regularly for the Guardian, The Times and the New York Times, and is the author of many books including Curiosities of Literature, Is Henry V a War Criminal? (with Cedric Watts), biographies of Walter Scott, Stephen Spender and the Victorian elephant Jumbo, and The Boy Who Loved Books, a memoir.

Cease I say, cantankerous old fools / 
Thy deeds hath made our streets a no go zone / 
No more shall Montagues and Capulets / 
Enact their West Side Story Sharks and Jets / 
Or else shall pay the forfeit of the peace.To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, this is the second of a new collection of the Bard's greatest plays, digested to a few thousand words with invaluable footnotes from John Sutherland. Funny and incredibly clever, these parodies are a joy for those who know their Shakespeare, perfect for the theatre goer needing a quick recap, and a massive relief for those just desperate to pass their English exam.

Incomplete Shakespeare: Macbeth

John Crace, creator of the Guardian's 'Digested Read' column, parodies 'the Scottish play' in a brilliantly funny reduced form, with Professor John Sutherland providing notes.

John Crace (Author) 
John Crace is the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer and author of the ‘Digested Read’ columns and he writes regularly for Grazia. He is the author of I Never Promised you a Rose Garden: A short guide to modern politics, the coalition and the general election and also Baby Alarm: A Neurotic’s Guide to Fatherhood, Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success , Harry's Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp, Brideshead Abbreviated: the Digested Read of the Twentieth Century and The Digested Twenty-first Century. He lives in London. 
 
John Sutherland (Author) 
John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature at University College London and previously taught at the California Institute of Technology. He writes regularly for the Guardian, The Times and the New York Times, and is the author of many books including Curiosities of Literature, Is Henry V a War Criminal? (with Cedric Watts), biographies of Walter Scott, Stephen Spender and the Victorian elephant Jumbo, and The Boy Who Loved Books, a memoir.

‘Give me the daggers and I’ll pin the blame/ On Duncan’s grooms who both are also slain. /A little water clears us of this deed /Though a large scotch might also do the trick...’  To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, this is the first of a new collection of the Bard's greatest plays, digested to a few thousand words with invaluable side notes from John Sutherland.  Funny and incredibly clever, these parodies are a joy for those who know their Shakespeare, perfect for the theatre goer needing a quick recap, and a massive relief for those just desperate to pass their English exam.

A Short Guide to Modern Politics, the Coalition and the General Election

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

From Britain's wittiest political sketchwriter: the only must-read book about modern politics and our next General Election: informative, subversive and very funny.

Crace has a secret weapon in his armoury when he tells the story of the coalition and modern politics: his imaginary accounts of conversations between the people in power. They leave you thinking: “So THAT’s how it was!” It’s a rare gift. And it’s very funny.

I thoroughly enjoyed this funny, informative account of the coalition. He reminds us that under every rose garden is a steaming great pile of manure.

Loved John Crace's new, wry look at the coalition "I Never  Promised You a Rose Garden". A GREAT Xmas present.

One of the best politics books of the year: a satirical account of the bizarre world of coalition bickering.

John Crace is the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer and author of the ‘Digested Read’ columns. He is the author of I Never Promised you a Rose Garden: A short guide to modern politics, the coalition and the general election and also Baby Alarm: A Neurotic’s Guide to Fatherhood, Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success , Harry's Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp, Brideshead Abbreviated: the Digested Read of the Twentieth Century and The Digested Twenty-first Century. He lives in London.

Exactly a week after the general election, two men – ‘Call me Dave’ and ‘Call me Nick’ – walked side by side into the rose garden of No. 10 Downing Street to give their first press-conference as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, looking for all the world like men in love. It was a romance in which people wanted to believe. But it was also one that people couldn't help but mistrust. Most unnerving, however, was the sense that they both couldn't quite believe their luck. 
 
Cameron: I can't believe it. All those people out there just for us ... 
Clegg: I know. It's mad, isn't it? I have to keep pinching myself as well. 
Cameron: Go on say it again ... 
Clegg: What? 
Cameron: Call me Prime Minister ... 
 
The storms the Dave and Nick partnership would have to face (same sex marriage, plebgate, triple dip recession, riots ...) were then unclear. Now, almost five years on, this up-to-the-minute portrait of Westminster and the forthcoming General Election exposes the realities of the Coalition, while offering an indispensible guide to a half-decade of madness: 
 
· * Foreign Policy - The new 'special relationship' - William Hague and Angelina Jolie 
· * The Economy - Osborne finally cracks it: boom in London; bust everywhere else. 
· * Immigration - should the entire population of Bulgaria pick strawberries for us? 
· * The Opposition - how Labour got the wrong Miliband. 
Includes: 
* UKIP, PPI, ISIS and other dubious acronyms. 
· * The countdown to the General Election 2015: five years of planning since the last one. 
Insightful, painful, very funny, this is a must-read for all of us with a vote, whichever side we thought we were on.

The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century

Brideshead Abbreviated

John Crace, creator of the Guardian's 'Digested Read' column, hilariously summarises the great - and not so great - classics of modern literature

A swift kick up the backside to some of modern literature's most iconic works. Accurate, merciless and very, very funny

I've read all these books at least twice - and now I've read John Crace's digested versions I wonder why I bothered

A genius and a madman. The meanest, funniest parodist alive

For the last 10 years [Crace's] 'Digested Reads' have been reason enough to buy the Guardian. Taking a well-known novel, he gives a brief distillation of the plot while capturing - often perfectly - the tone of its author. At the same time, he jabs a sharpened elbow into their pomposities and limitations

Beautifully observed and poisonously cruel ... laugh-out-loud funny

With witty, accurate impressions of writers' styles, this is the best way to appear incredibly well read without getting bogged down in hundreds of pages of James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway

A fun read ... Crace takes no prisoners as he chews up and spits out a century of literature.  An amusing treat for the well-read and a fantastic cheat's guide for those who feel they probably should have read more

One hundred classics of modern literature are wickedly abridged by a smart satirist

John Crace's 'Digested Read' column in the Guardian has rightly acquired a cult following. Each week fans avidly devour his latest razor-sharp literary assassination, while authors turn tremblingly to the appropriate page of the review section, fearful that it may be their turn to be mercilessly sent up. 
 
Now he turns his critical eye on the classics of the last century, offering bite-sized pastiches of everything from Mrs Dalloway to Trainspotting via Lolita and The Great Gatsby. Those who have never quite got around to reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will be delighted to find its essence distilled into a handful of paragraphs. Those who have never really enjoyed Lord of the Flies will be pleased to find it hilariously parodied in an easily swallowable 982 words. And those who find all such works a little highbrow will be relieved to discover, between the covers of this book, John Crace's take on the likes of Ian Fleming, P. G. Wodehouse and the Highway Code. 
 
Witty and sharp, this is essential reading both for those who genuinely love literature and for those who merely want to appear ridiculously well read.

John Crace

John Sutherland

Benedick: I am man enough to say that I love thee. Is that not strange? 
Beatrice: Not really… 
Benedick: By my sword, Beatrice thou lovest me. 
Beatrice: Get over yourself 
 
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, this is the third of a new collection of the Bard's greatest plays, digested to a few thousand words with invaluable side notes from John Sutherland. Funny and incredibly clever, these parodies are a joy for those who know their Shakespeare, perfect for the theatre goer needing a quick recap, and a massive relief for those just desperate to pass their English exam.

John Crace

Incomplete Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

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