Paradise Takeaway is a long poem with Luton Airport in it. Part memoir, part invention, it takes us along the bus and train routes of the London metropolitan area, not stopping at the eponymous fast food outlet en route to Aylesbury. On the way you’ll meet the Spirit of Rail, the Lady of Passport Control, a famous German philosopher, and other figures real and unreal.
Warning: this book contains Marmite.
Somewhere at the back of it all is ‘Germany: A Winter’s Fairy Tale’, Heinrich Heine’s long poem on returning to Germany for the first time after thirteen years in Parisian exile. Drawing on thirty years of trips back from Berlin to the UK, and a lifetime of not always entirely healthy eating, Alistair Noon reflects on what it is to watch a country and a waistline changing. And there isn’t a single mention of You Know What.