Locally based journalist and author Quentin Letts' first book promises to be the perfect read for anyone who despairs the state of the country. Grumpy old men and women everywhere will love the 50 savage and witty pen portraits of those responsible for everything wrong with the country today in '50 people who buggered up Britain.' Although those who feel Diana was the Princess of their heart should be warned, she comes in for scathing criticism.

Quentin Letts is parliamentary sketch writer and theatre critic for the Daily Mail and a regular broadcaster on radio and television. He lists his recreations, in Who's Who as 'gossip' and 'character defenestration'.

This 'master of the vituperative arts' will be signing copies of the book in Ledbury Books and Maps on Saturday, October 25th, from 11am - 1pm. He will then be in Ross Books on November 1st from 11am until 12 noon.

Letts sharpens his nib and stabs them where they deserve it, from tennis player John McEnroe to TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, who put the 'h' in Aspidistra.

From Margaret Thatcher, Gordon Brown, David Blunkett et al; to Topsy and Tim, Janet Street-Porter, Graham Kendrick, the writer of Letts' most loathed happy-clappy hymn 'Shine, Jesus, Shine', here are the people who 'made our country the ugly, scheming, cheating, beer-ridden bum of the Western world. Here are the fools and knaves and vulgarians who ripped down our British glories and imposed the tawdry and the trite'.

On Princess Diana: 'The woman was a liability, a soufflé of false ideas, a super-model with all that that entails. She was the glamourous tool of cleverer men, a plaything for the powerful, a delusion worshipped only by the impressionable.'

Letts' outrageous pen portraits, some comical, some steaming with anger, include royalty, politicians, artists and even the man who invented the mini-roundabout.

50 people who buggared up Britain by Quentin Letts is published by Constable and costs £12.99.