The history man
Novel - Howard Kirk is the trendiest of radical tutors at a fashionable university campus. A self-appointed revolutionary hero, Howard always comes out on top. And Malcolm Bradbury dissects him in this savagely funny novel that has been universally acclaimed as one of the masterpieces of the decade.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
4people
2021–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Don't miss out on "The History Man", by Malcolm Bradbury, another campus novel that is as dark as it is funny.
- This has happened before. Read The History Man by Bradbury.
And what will happen is that being "politically unreasonable" will be unfashionable and the society will swing to an equilibrium once again. The extremists will leave or retire and the people who kept their heads down will say "they were a silly bunch". In the UK they were labelled "The Loony Left" and subject to much comedy.
To suggest that it's either one extreme or the other isn't how things will work.
- Glad you liked it. The scene with the Jennifer Rush song is living free in my mind, when Warren Clark's infatuation breaks surface.
The Beeb did a version of "the history man" by Malcolm Bradbury which I think was OK, but a bit less successful. They're somewhat contemporary novels about academia. They also did several of the Tom Sharpe novels but they're generally more boisterous, picaresque stories.
- Ever read "The History Man"? He starts a false university rumor that a controversial speaker has been banned so everyone then feels obliged to invite him causing protests and chaos. This was set in the early 1970's. We have not invented fuss and perhaps could do with more of a sense of history before getting upset. It was ever thus.
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