Squire Haggard's Journal

by Michael Frederick Green

A bawdy parody of a late 18th-century gentleman's diary. Amos Haggard is a gargantuan, warty toad of a character. Along with Roderick, his idiot sidekick son, he carouses with prostitutes, imbibes... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1853753998
• ISBN13: 9781853753992
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Prion (GB)
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.8" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

A wickedly funny year

This little journal is fine and funny little parody of the eighteenth-century journals of Boswell, and Pepys (earlier) - and many less famous English diarists and chroniclers. It is introduced by its creator, Michael Green. In one elegant paragraph he tell us a lot about the diaries he used: "What struck me was their fascination with food (dinner was usually described in great detail and many of the dishes were rather strange by modern standards). Death and illness were also subject to close scrutiny. There seemed a compulsion to record sexual adventures in high-flown language which contrasted with the sordid realities [...] And there was an obsession with small sums of money." Green's protagonist, Amos Haggard (soon to be joined by his son) stays within these parameters as he takes the reader on a tour of his world (London, and then a comic tour of Europe). His diary entries are in turns droll, hysterically funny, gently repulsive (mostly the menu items), bawdy, and shot through with very funny political commentary on the hypocrisy (and criminality, sometimes) of the upper classes.The journal begins on September 16, 1777 with a deadpan report of a man, Jas. Soaper, having been hung for stealing a nail. By the next day, we learn that "Jas. Soaper found to be innocent." Amos Haggard is a man who knows his own mind; if not closed, it is narrow. "I make it an infallible rule while travellg. abroad to see as little of the scenery as possible; thus the mind is not unsettled and disturbed by the wild excesses of Nature and barren deserts such as the Scottish Highlands." But he does travel; he goes to France, landing on "the loathsome land of Toads and Pederasts" and then to Paris, where for sport he insults the French, and finds that is impressed by the Bastille. He admires the variety of punishments there, is impressed by the prison's architecture, and makes a quick sketch - "with a view to erctg. a smaller copy in England."Squire Haggard knows that December 25th is "the most sacred feast in the Christian Calendar," and observes annually by setting out early in the morning to evict his tenants who are in arrears. The day proceeds. He reports on his misdeeds and lack of nominal ethics with an insouciance that is constantly ridiculously funny.There is a slyly woven plot that offers ample satirical commentary on the historic English preoccupations of class and money. There are imagined and real insults, bad food and dyspepsia, gossip and civil intrigue, poisonings, outrageous behavior, and (in a wholly successful parody of Plague diaries) the ever-present Death. In addition there is romance, bawdy fun, much too much drinking and, at evening's end - Squire Haggard's inevitable reluctance to settle the bill. I laughed my way through this very entertaining little book.

A Great Romp

This farcical romp is a cross between Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Boswell's Life of Johnson. Green's humor is quintessentially British. His caricature of the English Milord is bitingly satirical. Writing a description of events that transpire at the time of the American Revolution, Green almost apologizes for the audacity of the British upper classes in thinking they could retain an empire on which the sun never sets. If Haggard per et fils, the Honorable CF, and the family Foulacre are aristocracy in its most literal sense, it's small wonder indeed that things turned out the way they did.This fun, bright book also gave birth to a short-lived English TV show, Haggard, that was absolutely tremendous. Sadly I've not found tapes anywhere available.