The Not Terribly Good Book of Heroic Failures: An intrepid selection from the original volumes - Couverture rigide

Last year Stephen Pile attempted to deliver a daring blow to the success ethic that so pervades Western culture. To his dismay, The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures sold many copies and even became the Sunday Times 'Humour Book of the Year.'

Nothing daunted, Stephen returns with a new selection which brings together the very best of his original classic titles - The Book of Heroic Failures and The Return of Heroic Failures.

The heartwarming news that stays news is that there really is no limit to what humanity can achieve, as we move onwards and downwards to ever more immortal and breathtaking feats of incompetence. The Not Terribly Good Book of Heroic Failures lovingly chronicles the all-time heroes who have been so bad at things that they shine as beacons for future generations.

It is hard not to feel boundless admiration, for example, for the fifty Mexican convicts who dug an escape tunnel out of their jail and came up in the courtroom where many of them had been sentenced. Or for the world's worst tourist, who spent three days in New York believing he was in Rome.

Stephen Pile was a journalist for far too long and is the author of The Book of Heroic Failures. He is also the Founder and President of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain and was the Artistic Director of the First International Nether Wallop Arts festival in 1984, which came about by accident. The next week Stephen met his wife, had three children, became a television critic for 14 years and hasn't been out of the house since, which is why Britain looks so strange and changed.