com, who sent a letter to all US senators, posing as a child and asking them for their favourite joke. Donaldson's third marriage, in 1986, was to Cherry Hatrick, who survived him; they separated six months after their marriage. M Godding Books Ltd is an internet book business running from Wiltshire and sending books all over the world every working day. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

The sender of these letters – a cantankerous crusader against pornography and modernity, and for hanging and Mrs. H. Rochester Sneath - the fictional headmaster of the fictional British public school Selhurst, created by Humphry Berkeley. You Cannot Live as I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The Thoroughly Disgraceful Life and Times of Willie Donaldson. Published in 1980, what would Henry Root of the wet fish emporium make of the A to Z listers of today.Back in 1979, people with too much time on their hands could send actual letters to leading politicians, judges and other luminaries of light entertainment, and expect a reply. In short, he was the British version of Sarah Palin – but people apparently took him seriously (with the exception of Cambridge). The phenomenal success of the Henry Root books, especially the first, enabled Donaldson to resume his earlier chaotic lifestyle, and in the mid-1980s he began using crack cocaine. Donaldson lived at 139 Elm Park Mansions on Park Walk, Chelsea, London SW10, from which address all the Root letters were sent.

Supposedly a wet fish merchant from Fulham, he is an avatar for a lot of the to-the-right-of-Attila-the-Hun, Thatcher-supporting, mildly racist, entitled, liberal-baiting mansplaining that was de rigeur and absolutely unchallenged in the Spectator/Private Eye yachts and casinos circles that Donaldson frequented. Henry Root, who made a fortune in wet fish, spent ten years in correspondence with powerful and famous people across Britain.His heroes were few, but those who were, to Root's mind, "sound" - principally Mrs Thatcher, the Dowager Lady Birdwood and James Anderton, "God's Cop", the self-appointed guardian of Greater Manchester's morals. It is very non PC and there is a wave of guilt that I should find it amusing, but nevertheless it is a good read. This book is a compendium of actual letters which the author wrote to all kinds of people of note - all from his persona of some kind of hard core petite bourgeoise British citizen.

a b c "William Donaldson – Womanising satirist and novelist who squandered several fortunes on wild living".The millions who enjoyed the original 'Root' will no doubt have assumed that such a public and hysterical scam could never be repeated. Donaldson's biographical survey of roguish Britons through the ages, Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics (2002), has been described as "a breathtaking triumph of misdirected scholarship". The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. By the way , reading the Private Eye magazine I can't help comparing it's "styles" with those incredible originals scripts, written by Henry Moor.