Alison Westwood

Don't expect deep literary analysis (for that, perhaps try Walter Redfern's "Puns: More Senses Than One"). This is a lighter run-through of punsters through the (p)ages, from Shakespeare to Tim Vine (via the likes of Dorothy Parker, WC Fields, Tommy Cooper, and a Wilde/West punfight), with profiles of each and a selection of their most notable calembours. Westwood's writing style seems fairly pedestrian though, and whoever checked the proofs was having an off-day (as on p.18 we see "wquivalent" (!), on pp.19/21 the running head defaults to "TITLE", and in several places paragraphs end without a full stop).… (meer)