Incomplete Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

John Crace, creator of the Guardian's 'Digested Read' column, parodies Much Ado About Nothing in a brilliantly funny reduced form, with Professor John Sutherland providing notes.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Book-lover's Anthology of Literary Erudition

Curiosities of Literature

One of our foremost critics tours some of the more arcane byways of literature

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.

How much heavier was Thackeray's brain than Walt Whitman's? Which novels do American soldiers read? When did cigarettes start making an appearance in English literature? And, while we're about it, who wrote the first Western, is there any link between asthma and literary genius, and what really happened on Dorothea's wedding night in Middlemarch? 
 
In Curiosities of Literature, John Sutherland contemplates the full import of questions such as these, and attempts a few answers in a series of essays that are both witty and eclectic. His approach is also unashamedly discursive. An account of the fast-working Mickey Spillane, for example, leads to a consideration of the substances, both legal and illegal, that authors have employed to boost their creative energies. An essay on good and bad handwriting points out in passing that Thackeray could write the Lord's Prayer on the back of a stamp. As for Mary Shelley, a brief recital of the circumstances in which she wrote Frankenstein stops off to consider what impact the miserable summer weather of 1816 had on the future path of English literature. 
 
Of course, it is debatable whether knowledge of these arcane topics adds to the wisdom of nations, but it does highlight the random pleasures to be found in reading literature and reading about it. As John Sutherland rightly asks, 'Why else read?'

John Sutherland

Generous, enjoyable and well informed.

A dazzling array of genres, periods, styles and tastes . . . chatty, insightful, unprejudiced (but not uncritical) and wise.

500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper prose fiction.

John Sutherland has been teaching English literature to university students for half a century. Now he's put the 'common reader' in the classroom in this capacious, witty guide to all the books you should read to claim the epithet 'well-read'. . . Each book gets a potted plot summary and a lively squirt of literary analysis, plus intriguing nuggets about the way reading tastes have changed through time, all told in Sutherland's breezy, intelligent voice.

Anyone hooked on fiction should be warned: this book will feed your addiction.

A glorious selection of books to tempt you - all considered in witty and elegant prose. Highly recommended.

A guide to 500 great novels and a handful of literary curiosities

Ranging all the way from Aaron's Rod to Zuleika Dobson, via The Devil Rides Out and Middlemarch, literary connoisseur and sleuth John Sutherland offers his very personal guide to the most rewarding, most remarkable and, on occasion, most shamelessly enjoyable works of fiction ever written. 
 
He brilliantly captures the flavour of each work and assesses its relative merits and demerits. He shows how it fits into a broader context and he offers endless snippets of intriguing information: did you know, for example, that the Nazis banned Bambi or that William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying on an upturned wheelbarrow; that Voltaire completed Candide in three days, or that Anna Sewell was paid £20 for Black Beauty? It is also effectively a history of the novel in 500 or so wittily informative, bite-sized pieces. 
 
Encyclopaedic and entertaining by turns, this is a wonderful dip-in book, whose opinions will inform and on occasion, no doubt, infuriate. 
__________________________________________________ 
'Generous, enjoyable and well informed.' Observer 
 
'Anyone hooked on fiction should be warned: this book will feed your addiction.' Mail on Sunday

John Sutherland

Praise for How to be Well Read

Generous, enjoyable and well informed.

A dazzling array of genres, periods, styles and tastes . . . chatty, insightful, unprejudiced (but not uncritical) and wise.

500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper prose fiction.

Generous, enjoyable and well informed.

A dazzling array of genres, periods, styles and tastes . . . chatty, insightful, unprejudiced (but not uncritical) and wise.

500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper prose fiction.

Generous, enjoyable and well informed.

A dazzling array of genres, periods, styles and tastes . . . chatty, insightful, unprejudiced (but not uncritical) and wise.

500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper prose fiction.

Books by John Sutherland

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter