What Just Happened?!: Dispatches from Turbulent Times (The Sunday Times Bestseller)

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On the one hand, there is merit here. Mariana Hyde is a good writer, who understands how to write engagingly about topical news. She does a very good job of capturing the readers attention, and the format of the book helps to keep up momentum. This book is a collection of Hyde's Sunday columns of the same name. It typically takes a piece of topical news and skewers it in a snarky, smug, centrist way. Therein lies another merit; this is a handy primer for anyone wanting a gentle way to remember the past five or so years. Unfortunately, the last five years being what they are, even Hyde's very light touch commentary can turn the reader's stomach. June 2016: As for Boris, never forget that the only untruth the prime ministerial favourite-in-waiting corrected in the entire campaign was the Sunday Times misapprehension that he dyed his hair. No other writer is more suited to chronicle the absurd and chaotic times we live in. This book - based on Hyde's spectacularly funny Guardian columns - tells the story of the hellscape of the Cameron, May and Johnson eras, Trumpian wtf-ery to celebrity twattery, the Royal soap-opera and the series finale of the United Kingdom. Hyde sees through the looking glass and calls out the utter crap rained down on us from populists, tech billionaires, reality TV monsters, media barons, sporting pundits and Gwyneth Paltrow. Marina’s sharp insights and dry humour make her regular Guardian columns a must read highlight. I often find myself re-reading paragraphs in wonder - thinking how cleverly they have been constructed, so sharply cutting through to the point at hand.

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No one was ever argued out of an opinion by a newspaper columnist - "opinion journalists" exist to provide a warm glow (and an incentive to renew subscriptions) in readers who share their opinions. That said, I happen to agree with Hyde on a lot of things, and even better, she's the pithiest, funniest columnist I know of currently operating in the UK or the US.Apart from the kittens, sometimes the poor waif of the Guardian has to really earn her keep, and they throw her in a big beast from the world of politics , he usually comes with horns, hooves and curly tail intact, and she has to tear him apart with her bare hands herself. The articles are well-written, but some of them are from quite a long time ago, so I had to keep looking things up to see what was being referred to. Celebrity kittens, and big beasts are I imagine, fed to her through a hatch, on a pitch fork, from a distance for the safety of her handlers. Marina Hyde writes for The Guardian newspaper and “What Just Happened” is a collection of her columns from 2016 - 2022, mostly a satirical commentary on British politics but also with sections on other topics including the royal family, sport and celebrities. Each year in politics as its own section (2016: Binfire of the Vanities, 2021: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before) with the other topics interspersed. I thought this was a good way to lay out the book as it broke up the narrative and also provided a bit of light relief. Although that’s not to say that this book was unrelenting doom and gloom - Marina Hyde’s writing is extremely witty and had me laughing out loud a lot of the time. She covers a range of topics in her columns, not all to my taste. Quite a lot of politics, of course. Some sport, as she’s knowledgable about football in particular, which is also OK with me. But she also writes about ‘Showbiz’ sometimes and although I can see she’s trying to explain celebrity culture without glorifying it I confess to having skipped much of those chapters. Though the #Metoo review was good.

What Just Happened?!: Dispatches from Turbulent Times - Goodreads

Though Geldof was annoying she was turning a corner and was on her way to becoming an interesting woman, but we will never know now what she might have become, will we?Furthermore, please never refer to any form of exercise or any exclusionary method of eating as ‘a philosophy’. Existentialism is a philosophy. Raw food is food that has not been heated above 40 degrees. Let that clear up any persistent muddling of the two.” A full state banquet of crazy: Marina Hyde’s Guardian column has been a reliable place to turn to for comic relief when the grotesque incompetence, chaos, sleaze and lies of our betters threaten to overwhelm. Arguably, a collection of journalistic hot takes on an unusually turbulent period in our history - this volume starts in 2019 and ends in the defenestration of Johnson - runs the risk of seeming horribly dated but we need this as a reminder, and a laugh out loud one at that, of all that has happened. He sniffed: ‘People with knives will end up stabbing themselves,’ which sounds like something Iain’s mother might have told him when he was 13 to explain why he was still using a spoon to eat his lunch.”