The Olivetti Chronicles

John Peel is best known for his four decades of radio broadcasting. His Radio 1 shows pretty much defined popular culture as it emerged and shaped the taste of successive generations of music lovers. His Radio 4 show, IHome Truths/I, became required listening for millions. But all the while, Peel was also committing his laconic brilliance to paper, in articles and reviews for newspapers and magazines, his diaries and his letters. Now for the first time, these writings have been brought together. Selected by his wife, Sheila, and his four children, these writings amount to a second autobiography, telling the John Peel story as it happened. From his earliest journalism - and, as Peel admitted in the original synopsis of his autobiography: 'starting with crap pieces (opportunities for hilarious quotes from same "clouds are poems written in the sky")', he also wrote contributions for IInternational Times/I, IOz/I, IGandalf's Garden/I and IDisc and Music Echo,/I then ISounds/I, the IObserver/I, the IIndependent/I, IRadio Times/I and he was even briefly a correspondent for IBike/I magazine. Woven through these pieces are Peel's diary entries, letters and personal reflections from his family who are the subject of so many of them. This extraordinary, hilarious and moving book is a reminder of just why John Peel remains a truly great Briton and how much we still miss him...