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  • Published: 6 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9781448113545
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

Bird Brain





A very, very funny novel about country sports, murder, intrigue - and talking pheasants.

It begins for Basil 'Banger' Peyton-Crumbe the day he dies in a pheasant-shooting incident.

A tragic accident, thinks the local constable, but Banger's gundogs and Buck, the police dog, exhibiting a level of intelligence vastly superior to that of their owners, suspect murder. And for Basil, proud slayer of over 41,000 birds with the cheap old 12-bore he's had since childhood, things go from bad to very bad.

  • Published: 6 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9781448113545
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

About the author

Guy Kennaway

Guy Kennaway's books include the novels One People and Bird Brain and Sunbathing Naked, a memoir. He lives in Somerset.

Praise for Bird Brain

A bloody brilliant book

Spectator

A wonderfully astute satire with full confidence in its own eccentricity... Ripe, rich, fun, this is a beautifully turned story, good to the very last drop

Sunday Times

Funny, poignant and original, this country-house whodunit made me laugh out loud, and nod in recognition at its acerbic observations

Country Life

I loved it... It's a book I've been waiting for all my adult life, for it feels to me like nothing so much as a rather adult version of that other great pheasant story, Roald Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World

Rachel Cooke, Observer

Only a Briton could have written Bird Brain. Eccentric and anthropomorphic, you’ll either love or hate this book. I loved it. It’s high-spirited, subversive and full of wry social observation and excellent jokes. Think Paul Torday meets Chicken Run

Daily Mail

Tom Sharpe meets Watership Down in the hugely enjoyable story of Basil "Banger" Peyton-Crumbe, a man who, having exulted in the slaughter of game birds all his life, is killed in a shooting accident and reincarnated as a pheasant…. It would not be quite accurate to say the book anthropomorphizes animals because they all retain, quite brilliantly, their animal natures, but at the same time Banger, even as a dim bird begins to gain insight into his shortcomings as a human being.Funny, astute and completely absorbing

Guardian