If you are stuck for a gift to buy your father for Father's Day then here's a gift I'm sure he'd like - "The Dangerous Book For Boys."
Written by British authors Hal and Conn Iggulden it was released in 2006 and spent 52 weeks - a whole year - in the bestseller Top 10.
The book is packed full of interesting "boys' stuff" - from articles about the British Empire and great stories about Lord Nelson, Douglas Bader, Scott of the Antarctic astronomy, spiders, sports and famous battles.
Chapters in "The Dangerous Book for Boys" include: The Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, Conkers, Laws of Football, Dinosaurs, Fishing, Juggling, Timers and Tripwires, Kings and Queens, Famous Battles, Spies, Making Crystals, Insects and Spiders, Astronomy, Girls, The Golden Age of Piracy, Secret Inks, Patron Saints of Britain, Skimming Stones, Dog Tricks, Making a Periscope, Coin Tricks, Marbles, Artillery, The Origin of Words, and The Solar System.
Suitable for boys aged 8 to 108!
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The year of boys living dangerously
By Nigel Farndale, Sunday Telegraph
17/06/2007
Nigel Farndale celebrates Father's Day by visiting one of his heroes - Conn Iggulden, co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys, which has just spent 52 weeks in the bestseller top 10
Conn Iggulden on the go-kart he built for The Dangerous Book for Boys
With eloquent timing, The Dangerous Book for Boys will have spent exactly one year in the top 10 of the bestseller list today, Father's Day.
The book is in many ways a nostalgic celebration of Britishness: along with guidance on how to build a tree house, play cricket and write grammatically correct English, there is also a chapter on what a wonderful thing the British Empire was.
You would imagine, then, that Conn Iggulden, who wrote the book with his younger brother, Hal, wouldn't approve of Father's Day, it being an American import.
"No, I'm all for it," he says with a grin. "Especially as the book has also been number two in the American bestseller list since it was published there last month." He drums his fingers on his kitchen table. "Did you know that the first Father's Day was held in 1908 in West Virginia? Grace Golden Clayton came up with the idea. How sad am I for knowing that?"
Mr Iggulden, a tall, bespectacled 35-year-old who lives with his wife and three children in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, knows a lot of trivia. He also knows some useful things, such as how to skin a rabbit, build a go-kart, and tie a noose, all of which are included in his book. Well, not quite all.
"The original chapter in the book was 'The Six Knots Every boy should know', now it is five. Our rule was that we had to be able to make everything in the book ourselves, so I made a noose, which is the most beautiful knot, and being a bit of a kid myself, I put it round my neck to see what it was like.
"I pulled the wrong bit when trying to take it off and it got tighter and I asked my brother to get it off me and he pulled the wrong one as well, so we had a proper little moment in our garden shed. After me going red in the face and panicking, we said: 'Know what? Maybe we shouldn't include this one.' "
The timing of this anniversary is eloquent in another way. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has just published a report arguing that parents have become too "risk averse" and should encourage children to climb trees, rather than stay indoors and play computer games, even if that sometimes means falling and breaking their bones. Scraping knees, grazing elbows and getting stung by nettles teaches children valuable, life-long lessons, the report concludes.
"I would love to believe that the report was prompted by our book," Mr Iggulden says. "But I think, actually, it and the book is part of a pendulum swing, a reaction against the 'health and safety' culture that has been taking over our lives.
"It was only a couple of years ago that three children below the age of 16 were reported for messing about in a tree and the police came and took their fingerprints and DNA evidence. They were released but, dear God, get a sense of proportion."
Mr Iggulden argues that boys especially have to learn by making mistakes. "I cut my finger quite badly learning to whittle, but it taught me to cut away from myself.
You learn caution by developing skills."
The book has clearly touched a nerve. As the father of three young boys, I for one have come to regard it as a sort of bible. But it has also caused a seismic crack in the publishing world. It broke all the rules with its Fifties-style cover and its antiquated illustrations, but the book-buying public has spontaneously spoken and publishers - who were initially appalled by the British Empire chapters - have had to listen.
Of the 52 weeks the book has spent in the top 10 (a feat that has happened only once before, five years ago with Schott's Miscellany), 17 were at number one.
Not only was The Dangerous Book for Boys named Book of the Year at this year's British Book Awards, after sales of three-quarters of a million copies, Conn Iggulden has also pulled off the unprecedented double of being top of the fiction and non fiction lists simultaneously.
(This caused some eye-rolling among literary types. Few authors begrudged the success of the Dangerous Book, but the success of Conn's novel, Wolf of the Plains, was resented a little because it seemed to be more due to piggy-backing.)
He was delighted. He is, he admits, "immensely competitive", and was especially pleased to beat Richard Dawkins, the author of the bestselling God Delusion, in the awards. "The Dangerous Book argues that the three most important pillars in British society are Shakespeare, Latin and the King James Bible, which must annoy Dawkins. Ha!"
He also admits to being "quite reactionary" and "careful" with money and says that he has made less from the book than I would think, but it has meant he has been able to pay off his mortgage.
Endearingly, he is always willing to have a go and recently tried bungee jumping, even though he says he is hopelessly uncoordinated. "My brother calls me 'a control freak stress monkey', but obsession gets the job done."
He read English at London University and taught it at a London comprehensive for seven years, which is when he became frustrated about low standards of grammar.
When his son, Cameron, was born, six years ago, he wanted to find a book that would not only explain about the pluperfect tense and why you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition, but also tell inspiring stories about British heroes, such as Nelson, Scott of the Antarctic and Douglas Bader.
In other words, he wanted to read to his son the sort of book his father had read to him. His father had been in Bomber Command, which explains a lot. He also taught physics and woodwork. "When your father tells you how to use a chisel, you remember it for the rest of your life," he says.
His father is still alive; does he still hero-worship him? "I suppose I do. Very few people my age had a father in the war. It's usually a grandfather. I think having tracer fire looping up at you out of the darkness gives you a perspective.
My father didn't expect to survive the war, and in fact nearly didn't, losing a finger in one crash. It makes me think nothing I do will ever be that important. Thinking about what he did makes it difficult for me to get upset about silly things like running out of paperclips."
In Mr Iggulden's sitting-room there is a grand piano which he plays every morning and which, exotically enough, came into his family generations ago as a settlement for a debt. There are also shelves of books here, which include some of those on his Dangerous Book recommended reading list, such as Flashman.
There is also the new Pocket Dangerous Book for Boys with its Baden-Powell-style green cover, and a Portuguese edition of the Dangerous Book with a bold red cover.
"Only when that copy came in the post did I realise that the Portuguese publishers had taken out my chapter on the British Empire," he says with a philosophical shake of his head.
Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page
telegraph.co.uk
Written by British authors Hal and Conn Iggulden it was released in 2006 and spent 52 weeks - a whole year - in the bestseller Top 10.
The book is packed full of interesting "boys' stuff" - from articles about the British Empire and great stories about Lord Nelson, Douglas Bader, Scott of the Antarctic astronomy, spiders, sports and famous battles.
Chapters in "The Dangerous Book for Boys" include: The Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, Conkers, Laws of Football, Dinosaurs, Fishing, Juggling, Timers and Tripwires, Kings and Queens, Famous Battles, Spies, Making Crystals, Insects and Spiders, Astronomy, Girls, The Golden Age of Piracy, Secret Inks, Patron Saints of Britain, Skimming Stones, Dog Tricks, Making a Periscope, Coin Tricks, Marbles, Artillery, The Origin of Words, and The Solar System.
Suitable for boys aged 8 to 108!
******************************
The year of boys living dangerously
By Nigel Farndale, Sunday Telegraph
17/06/2007
Nigel Farndale celebrates Father's Day by visiting one of his heroes - Conn Iggulden, co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys, which has just spent 52 weeks in the bestseller top 10
Conn Iggulden on the go-kart he built for The Dangerous Book for Boys
With eloquent timing, The Dangerous Book for Boys will have spent exactly one year in the top 10 of the bestseller list today, Father's Day.
The book is in many ways a nostalgic celebration of Britishness: along with guidance on how to build a tree house, play cricket and write grammatically correct English, there is also a chapter on what a wonderful thing the British Empire was.
You would imagine, then, that Conn Iggulden, who wrote the book with his younger brother, Hal, wouldn't approve of Father's Day, it being an American import.
"No, I'm all for it," he says with a grin. "Especially as the book has also been number two in the American bestseller list since it was published there last month." He drums his fingers on his kitchen table. "Did you know that the first Father's Day was held in 1908 in West Virginia? Grace Golden Clayton came up with the idea. How sad am I for knowing that?"
Mr Iggulden, a tall, bespectacled 35-year-old who lives with his wife and three children in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, knows a lot of trivia. He also knows some useful things, such as how to skin a rabbit, build a go-kart, and tie a noose, all of which are included in his book. Well, not quite all.
"The original chapter in the book was 'The Six Knots Every boy should know', now it is five. Our rule was that we had to be able to make everything in the book ourselves, so I made a noose, which is the most beautiful knot, and being a bit of a kid myself, I put it round my neck to see what it was like.
"I pulled the wrong bit when trying to take it off and it got tighter and I asked my brother to get it off me and he pulled the wrong one as well, so we had a proper little moment in our garden shed. After me going red in the face and panicking, we said: 'Know what? Maybe we shouldn't include this one.' "
The timing of this anniversary is eloquent in another way. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has just published a report arguing that parents have become too "risk averse" and should encourage children to climb trees, rather than stay indoors and play computer games, even if that sometimes means falling and breaking their bones. Scraping knees, grazing elbows and getting stung by nettles teaches children valuable, life-long lessons, the report concludes.
"I would love to believe that the report was prompted by our book," Mr Iggulden says. "But I think, actually, it and the book is part of a pendulum swing, a reaction against the 'health and safety' culture that has been taking over our lives.
"It was only a couple of years ago that three children below the age of 16 were reported for messing about in a tree and the police came and took their fingerprints and DNA evidence. They were released but, dear God, get a sense of proportion."
Mr Iggulden argues that boys especially have to learn by making mistakes. "I cut my finger quite badly learning to whittle, but it taught me to cut away from myself.
You learn caution by developing skills."
The book has clearly touched a nerve. As the father of three young boys, I for one have come to regard it as a sort of bible. But it has also caused a seismic crack in the publishing world. It broke all the rules with its Fifties-style cover and its antiquated illustrations, but the book-buying public has spontaneously spoken and publishers - who were initially appalled by the British Empire chapters - have had to listen.
Of the 52 weeks the book has spent in the top 10 (a feat that has happened only once before, five years ago with Schott's Miscellany), 17 were at number one.
Not only was The Dangerous Book for Boys named Book of the Year at this year's British Book Awards, after sales of three-quarters of a million copies, Conn Iggulden has also pulled off the unprecedented double of being top of the fiction and non fiction lists simultaneously.
(This caused some eye-rolling among literary types. Few authors begrudged the success of the Dangerous Book, but the success of Conn's novel, Wolf of the Plains, was resented a little because it seemed to be more due to piggy-backing.)
He was delighted. He is, he admits, "immensely competitive", and was especially pleased to beat Richard Dawkins, the author of the bestselling God Delusion, in the awards. "The Dangerous Book argues that the three most important pillars in British society are Shakespeare, Latin and the King James Bible, which must annoy Dawkins. Ha!"
He also admits to being "quite reactionary" and "careful" with money and says that he has made less from the book than I would think, but it has meant he has been able to pay off his mortgage.
Endearingly, he is always willing to have a go and recently tried bungee jumping, even though he says he is hopelessly uncoordinated. "My brother calls me 'a control freak stress monkey', but obsession gets the job done."
He read English at London University and taught it at a London comprehensive for seven years, which is when he became frustrated about low standards of grammar.
When his son, Cameron, was born, six years ago, he wanted to find a book that would not only explain about the pluperfect tense and why you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition, but also tell inspiring stories about British heroes, such as Nelson, Scott of the Antarctic and Douglas Bader.
In other words, he wanted to read to his son the sort of book his father had read to him. His father had been in Bomber Command, which explains a lot. He also taught physics and woodwork. "When your father tells you how to use a chisel, you remember it for the rest of your life," he says.
His father is still alive; does he still hero-worship him? "I suppose I do. Very few people my age had a father in the war. It's usually a grandfather. I think having tracer fire looping up at you out of the darkness gives you a perspective.
My father didn't expect to survive the war, and in fact nearly didn't, losing a finger in one crash. It makes me think nothing I do will ever be that important. Thinking about what he did makes it difficult for me to get upset about silly things like running out of paperclips."
In Mr Iggulden's sitting-room there is a grand piano which he plays every morning and which, exotically enough, came into his family generations ago as a settlement for a debt. There are also shelves of books here, which include some of those on his Dangerous Book recommended reading list, such as Flashman.
There is also the new Pocket Dangerous Book for Boys with its Baden-Powell-style green cover, and a Portuguese edition of the Dangerous Book with a bold red cover.
"Only when that copy came in the post did I realise that the Portuguese publishers had taken out my chapter on the British Empire," he says with a philosophical shake of his head.
Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page
telegraph.co.uk
