Review - Death, Destruction and a Packet of Peanuts by Chris Pascoe

As someone who doesn't drink and has no interest in history, this book didn't seem particularly promising. A bloke goes on a massive pub crawl, while visiting sites of major battlefields of the English Civil War.
By the end of the second page, I was hooked. The author, Chris Pascoe, is a very funny writer - I defy anyone not to laugh at his story of the shed-eating dog or the American tourist rewriting history. But even more impressively, he brings the Civil War, a subject I've always associated with memorising dates at school, to full technicolour life. Some of the descriptions of battles are breathtaking and the characters mesemerising. Prince Rupert was my favourite, a man who didn't seem to have any concept of personal safety.
And then there was Pete. Pete was the author's traveling companion and a one-man disaster zone. His adventures are enough to make a book on their own, the highlights being an ill-advised toilet seat attack on a skinhead.
Throw in an incoherent Northerner called Dave and a dog of the same name, and you've got a book that I couldn't put down. Highly recommended.