Reginald Perrin Omnibus

Jul 29, 2025 11:52 AM

Author:David Nobbs

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Aclassic collection of the hilarious Reginald Perrin books: The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin, The Return of Reginald Perrin and The Better World of Reginald Perrin, immortalised in two BBC TV series, now being repeated on BBC Four.

Reginald Iolanthe Perrin is surely one of the best loved comedy heroes of our time, in both literature and television. This omnibus brings together the first three Reginald Perrin novels containing a lifetime's outrageous and hilarious adventures.

When we first meet Reggie, he is sick to death with selling exotic ice creams at Sunshine Desserts. Driven to desperation by the rat race and the unpunctuality of Britain's trains, Reggie's small eccentricities escalate to the extreme, until finally he leaves the unacceptable face of capitalism behind by driving off in a stolen motorised jelly. In his pursuit of the unconventional, he devotes himself to faking his own death, opening a shop devoted to selling completely useless goods, and setting up a commune strictly for the middle-class and middle-aged.

Join Reggie, who didn't get where he is today without some help from some memorable supporting characters, in one man's quest to avoid an everyday existence.

Reviews

The finest living English novelist

—— W. H. Auden

Experimental in tone; spare and sensuous by turns, irradiated by stylistic fireworks... his novels are dazzling exercises in form

—— D.J Taylor , Independent

One cannot think of another modernist writer so neglected and yet so warmly humane

—— The Times

Henry Green's novels are among the most dazzling, inventive and individual of the last century... his writing is wonderfully seductive - as oblique, suggestive and full of surprises as life itself

—— Daily Telegraph

The most curious imagination in the English novel

—— V.S. Pritchett

Gladwell soars high

—— Spectator

Glam, glitz, gorgeous people... so Jordan!

—— Woman

A page-turner... it is brilliant. Genuinely amusing and readable

—— Evening Standard

A fabulous guilty holiday pleasure

—— heat

The Magicians is angst-ridden, bleak, occasionally joyous and gloriously readable. Forget Hogwarts: this is where the magic really is.

—— Jayne Nelson , SFX 5 star review

This is a book for grown-up fans of children's fantasy and would also appeal to those who loved Donna Tartt's The Secret History . Highly recommended

—— Library Journal

The Magicians is the most dazzling, erudite and thoughtful fantasy novel to date. You'll be bedazzled by the magic but also brought short by what it has to say about the world we live in

—— Gary Shteyngart , author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan

The Magicians is a spellbinding, fast-moving, dark fantasy book for grownups that feels like an instant classic. I read it in a niffin-blue blaze of page turning, enthralled by Grossman's verbal and imaginative wizardry, his complex characters and most of all, his superb, brilliant inquiry into the wondrous, dangerous world of magic

—— Kate Christensen , author of The Epicure's Lament and The Great Man

The Magicians is Harry Potter as it might have been written by John Crowley...This is one of the best fantasies I've read in ages

—— Elizabeth Hand , Fantasy & Science Fiction

The author has taken all that is held dear in the fantasy genre, reverently (most of the time) tipping the hat to Rowling, Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin and others, and shown it from a completely different and unique angle

—— Fantasy Book Review

...a gripping fantasy thriller that will please all the older Harry Potter fans out there

—— Yours Magazine

Jonathan Littell veers between brilliance and bathos...

—— Sally Cousins , The Telegraph

Grotesque, dismaying, chilling in its focus on the fine detail of barbarism, this epic of evil is also addictively readable

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent on Sunday

Compelling... utterly engaging... for anyone whose interest in his subjects is great to enough to bear their unflinching portrayal The Kindly Ones is an essential novel

—— Chris Power , The Times

It's an amazing picture of evil, wonderfully written (and very well translated from the original French by Charlotte Mandell), and left me feeling as though I had supped with the damned

—— Jane Knight , The Times

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