211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do

Containing everything from the rules of conkers to the proper way to take off your pants without removing your trousers, 211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do is the book you’ve been missing. The ideal gift for sons, fathers, and brothers desperate to know the rules of dwile flonking or longing for expert guidance on lawn mowing, magic tricks, and militant cookery. Fascinating, funny, and far-ranging, this cracking compendium is divided into surprisingly handy sections, including Sideshow Science, The Compleat Outdoorsman, and The Tree of Useless Knowledge. It won’t improve your morals or make you smell nice, but it will entertain and inform.

You may remember the flurry of retro books of guidance for boys of all ages that dominated the bestseller lists some twenty years ago, spearheaded by the work of Iggulden pere et fils. Among the biggest sellers was Tom Cutler's 211 THINGS A BRIGHT BOY CAN DO, which chalked up hundreds of thousands of sales worldwide in its first decade of life. Another decade on, its author has recently jacked it up to do remedial repairs to bodywork and transmission, and it is now fully reconditioned ready to race round the track anew, on its twenty-first birthday. 

It's such fun, so expertly executed, and Tom has done sterling work revising it for a new generation, while of course keeping it facing backwards in all the right ways.

We are due, surely, to give a new generation the opportunity to learn how to bend a spoon, wrestle a bull, write a limerick, shear a sheep, and master a host of other life-skills of the highest order.