Chocolate and Cuckoo clocks: The Essential Alan Coren edited by Giles Coren and Victoria Coren

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When people mention the late Alan Coren, they talk about him as a comic genius who could take any subject and, in a trice, make people see the funny side of it. Well, this is true — and here is a collection of Coren's writings, chosen by his children. But they're not just funny — they're deadly serious and sometimes chilling, too. Coren wrote about mortality on the eve of his 35th birthday. "The point is," he writes, "I am about to become half-dead." He died 34 and a bit years later, and his essay, read now, is a superb meditation on transience.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

Edited by his children, Giles and Victoria, "Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks" is an anthology of writing from the former editor of "Punch" and Radio 4 national treasure Alan Coren, who died in October 2007. In a prolific forty-year career Alan Coren wrote for "The Times", "Observer", "Tatler", "Daily Mail", "Mail on Sunday", "Listener", "Punch" and the "New Yorker", and published over 20 books including "The Sanity Inspector", "Golfing for Cats" and "The Collected Bulletins of Idi Amin" (he turned down an invitation from Amin to visit Uganda saying, 'I'll probably end up as a sandwich').Even twenty years ago he estimated that he had published six million words, or ten copies of War and Peace. This anthology draws together the best of Coren's previously published material as well as new unpublished autobiographical material. Coren was one of Britain's most prolific and now much-missed humourists, finding the comedy of life all around him and rendering it, hilariously and compellingly, in polished and witty prose which will be eagerly devoured by his loyal fanbase.