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 "A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid. . . the reports collected in 'I Wouldn't Start From Here' are graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology."
- Jonathan Meades, Books of the Year, Evening Standard
"An utterly sui generis report from the world's plague-spots."
- Michael Bywater, Books of the Year, New Statesman
"I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller."
- Rory MacLean, The Guardian
"A tour-de-force of hilarious, harrowing and ultimately enlightening reportage that will remind readers of the work of P.J. O'Rourke, Jon Ronson and David Foster Wallace."
- The Washington Times
"Unafraid to portray the world's warring people not just as victims and sufferers of legitimate grievances, but also as bloody-minded bastards and ill-informed fools."
- The Kathmandu Post
"A mix of dark humour and incisive political discourse."
- CNN Go
"His sardonic, self-deprecating perspective makes for unstuffy company."
- The Los Angeles Times
"Peppered with trenchant observations that reflect a nimble, cut-to-the-chase practicality, Mueller's interviews with everyone from terrorist warlords to international peacemakers are refreshingly irreverent yet astute."
- Booklist
"Travel writing in the danger zone that maintains its hipness and humanity."
- George Dunford, Books of the Year, Readings Monthly
"An addition to the genre founded by P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays In Hell', but it is one that pushes the boundaries."
- The Australian
"Mueller is the embodiment of what can happen with a fire in the belly and a desire to write out loud."
- Australian Book Review
"Mueller's travel writing is as incisive and entertaining as anything he's ever written about music."
- TNT
"A joy."
- Financial Times
"Delightfully laconic."
- The New Statesman
"Alternately chilling, funny and surprising, there's some great reportage here as Mueller struggles to reach an understanding of the world, quizzing the highest minister and the lowliest peasant."
- The Glasgow Herald
"His acerbic wit is matched by true empathy. . . we need this kind of gonzo journalism more than ever."
- Wanderlust
"Mueller spins what could have been the grimmest geopolitics into the finest black comedy. Like a print version of 'The Daily Show'."
- FHM
"Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator."
- Chris Ayres, The Times
"Touching, often blackly comic reportage."
- GQ
"Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable."
- The List
"Snappy, self-deprecating and sometimes outright hilarious."
- The Age
"Indelibly humorous and heartfelt."
- Sydney Sunday Telegraph
"An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones."
- Time Out
"He brings to his material the mixture of rage and earthy irony that is the mark of a great satirist
. . . rewarding, thought-provoking and ludicrously funny."
- PopMatters
"Mueller's book is an excellent example of why today's brave, lucid hacks are forced to admit fear and confusion."
- South China Morning Post
"His reporting is sharp, his experiences terrifying and funny."
- Melbourne Herald-Sun
"If you enjoy your international affairs and politics with a good dose of cynicism and black humour, then this book is one to read."
- Brisbane Courier-Mail
"Often laugh-out-loud funny, the writing is utterly engaging."
- Launceston Sunday Examiner
"Mueller's irreverent reportage from abroad is fundamentally a clever cover for the author's ruminations on race, religion, revolution, rock'n'roll and other important issues since September 11, 2001."
- The West Australian
"As hilarious and sardonic a host as this ridiculous world of ours demands."
- Shortlist
"Mueller busies himself with finding the odd, the surreal and the laughable as much as the shocking and upsetting."
- New Zealand Herald
"A real eye for surreal moments of black humour. . . Mueller's work here digs much deeper than the standard newspaper travel essay."
- Sydney Sun-Herald
"His best story, about his brief, bizarre jailing in Cameroon, reads like a 21st century 'Goon Show' script."
- Good Reading
"A rollicking ride through some of the world's scariest scenarios."
- Kalgoorlie Miner
"A strikingly funny book about some seriously unfunny places."
- Perth Sunday Times
"Not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga."
- The Wagga Wagga Advertiser
 "Andrew Mueller's piece about my band's tour with The Hold Steady is my favourite thing ever written about us. The fact that he is a war correspondent (though he claims otherwise) and music journalist and
approaches both with a similar slant makes him one of the most interesting
writers out there to me."
- Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers
"The most important critical anthology on popular music from a single author in a long time, its humour and insight equal with collections by Nick Tosches or Robert Palmer."
- KEXP Seattle
"Take one part P.J. O'Rourke, a healthy dose of Lester Bangs and a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, and you've got Andrew Mueller."
- Bookgasm
"Sharply observed and wittily constructed."
- Honolulu Star-Advertiser
"New edition of the rock classic."
- NY Press
"Mueller's humour makes for some enlightening reading."
- Biloxi-Gulfport Sun-Herald
"Sharp, witty and sarcastic."
- Chicago Tribune
 "Really rather good, in a barnstorming, country-punk sort of way. . . a highly capable ensemble."
- The Quietus
"A more than capable debut - allusive country-tough songs."
- Uncut
"The Blazing Zoos are undoubtedly fun, but they also have depth. . .
everything from Mueller's extensive use of brackets to the band's loving
recreation of classic country riffs bespeaks sincerity."
- Americana UK
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Remembrance Day
Time Out, November 2002
BILL Davies joined the army in September 1939; he’d turned 20 the day after war was declared. He figured he’d be called up soon enough anyway, so if he volunteered early, he reckoned, he might be able to choose his regiment. He attempted to join the Royal Artillery, who declined his services on the somewhat surreal grounds that they had no vacancies because there was a war on. “That’s the honest truth,” he laughs, “believe it or not.” Bill may be unique in military history as the only soldier who ended up in the Coldstream Guards because he couldn’t get enlisted as a gunner.
Bill was from West Bromwich, where he’d been a champion tennis player. He first came to London in February 1940, though he didn’t see much of it, spending two weeks venturing from Regents Park barracks to stand guard at Millbank hospital and Buckingham Palace, before going home on embarkation leave. He joined his battalion, the 1st, in France in 1940, just in time to be evacuated from Dunkirk. “I remember getting soaking wet,” he says. “That, and six hours being dive-bombed.” He got his ride across the Channel on a navy ship, and believes now that while he and the rest of the British Expeditionary Force were getting on their boats, Hitler had missed his. “If he’d invaded then,” says Bill, “I think it might have been all up.”
Bill’s battalion spent the next four years in Britain – Frome, Leeds, Halifax, Norfolk, Brighton. He returned to France on June 10th, 1944 – D-Day plus four – as a co-driver and machine-gunner on a Sherman tank. The 1st Battalion went ashore at Arromanches (“We were bombed a little on landing, but got away with it”) and fought through Caen and Bayeux before beginning their pursuit of the German army across northern Europe. The worst of it, says Bill, was Holland – fighting all the way from Eindhoven to Nijmegen in a desperate effort to catch up with the paratroops who had dropped behind German lines. To this day, the only World War II film Bill has seen is “A Bridge Too Far” – he wondered if it would match his personal recollection of Operation Market Garden. “It’s good,” he says. “Very fair.”
When Germany surrendered, Bill was in Hamburg (“A total wreck, but so was all of Germany.”) He served there as a sergeant in the Military Police until he was demobbed in 1946. Having married a Londoner in 1943, he had ambitions of joining the Metropolitan Police, but baulked at the wages of £4.50 a week (“and I’ve regretted it ever since.”) He later worked for the Post Office, as a stagehand at Elstree studios, and for a Sellotape manufacturer.
At around this time of year for the last 16 years, Bill and his wife have delivered poppies to schools in the Borehamwood area. The kids ask him lots of questions, he says, but he’s not convinced they believe the half of what he answers. Bill admits he knew nothing about Nazi Germany when he joined up – it wasn’t until 1945, when he started hearing stories from other soldiers and from German civilians, and later, when he started reading histories, that he fully appreciated what he’d helped defeat. “God knows what would have happened if we’d lost,” he says.
You can, of course, choose not to pin a poppy to your shirt this week. Just one of the uncountable benefits of what Bill did is that none of us are compelled to wear any kind of badge, and that alone is worth a tenner of anyone’s money.
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