The Best After-Dinner Stories

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Since Chaucer's day, the After Dinner Speech, designed to reduce the assembled company to helpless merriment, has presented the ultimate challenge. The best speakers are natural story-tellers - Gerard Hoffnung reading a selection of letters from continental hoteliers, John Mortimer telling the woeful tale of a man's numerous unsuccessful attempts to murder his wife, and in this collection of post-prandial treasures, you will find the very best of them, from Groucho Marx on how to resist a femme fatale to Ralph Steadman addressing the Lewis Carroll Centenary Dinner. Shaggy dog stories, practical jokes, sporting anecdotes, rousing toasts, travellers' tales, and risqué reminiscences rub shoulders in this essential collection with real-life revelations and moments of history. Among the guests are Peter Ustinov, Jilly Cooper, Brian Johnstone, Charles Dickens, Dorothy Parker, Robertson Davies, Henry Grady, and A.P. Herbert. There is food and drink in abundance, gentle reflection and endearing charm as well as defiant frivolity. Above all, there are stories for every occasion - witty, absurd, momentous, philosophical, fascinating, poignant, and forever entertaining.