By Request: Random Reflections on Random Subjects

Overview
By Request: Random Reflections on Random Subjects collects a wide-ranging set of brief, whimsical pieces by J. B. Morton, the long-running "Beachcomber" columnist best known for his Daily Express miscellanies. The book brings together short essays, mock-serious reports, parody correspondences and offbeat observations that Morton crafted to answer reader suggestions and to amuse a broad audience. Its shape is deliberately loose: each item stands alone yet shares a common voice that blends erudition with absurdity.
Morton's aim is amusement above instruction. Sentences skip gracefully from the plausible to the preposterous, and a light but precise hand keeps the comedy brisk. Readers familiar with the "Beachcomber" column will recognize the familiar cadence of misdirection, while newcomers will find a steady stream of short, digestible pieces that require no prior knowledge to enjoy.

Tone and Style
Morton's humor is urbane and conversational, leaning on understatement, sly irony and a fondness for the non sequitur. The writing often feigns high seriousness only to undercut itself with a comic twist; the mock-encyclopedic entry, the faux-expert opinion and the parodied letter all exploit the reader's expectations for comic effect. Wordplay, improbable analogies and abrupt changes of register are frequent tools, and Morton's taste for the surreal lifts a simple complaint or observation into the realm of the bizarrely memorable.
Beneath the laughs there is a cultivated restraint: jokes are rarely crude or mean-spirited, and sentiment, when it appears, is shaded with self-awareness. Language is used as an instrument of temperament, revealing a mind that delights in wit for its own sake but also in the artful shaping of a sentence.

Structure and Highlights
The book is essentially episodic, with each piece short enough to be read and re-read without commitment. Themes drift from domestic trifles to cultural oddities, from satirical takes on public figures to playful meditations on ordinary life. Because many items grew from reader requests, subject matter is eclectic: one paragraph may dissect a linguistic pet peeve, the next may invent an absurdist historical anecdote.
Highlights include pieces where Morton parodies learned forms, annals, minutes, or travelogues, turning their solemn conventions into opportunities for irony. Another recurring delight is the faux-letter or mock-interview, where a straight-faced question elicits an increasingly implausible reply, demonstrating Morton's mastery of escalating nonsense.

Context and Reception
Published in 1939, the book arrives at a fraught historical moment when readers sought both distraction and the reassurance of familiar comic voices. Morton's columns had been a steady presence in British newspapers for years, and collections such as this one gathered reader-favorite items for circulation beyond the daily press. Contemporary audiences valued the work for its ability to charm and deflate pomposity without malice.
Critics and general readers who appreciated light, inventive humour welcomed the book. It was not highbrow satire aimed at doctrinal subversion, but rather a cultivated miscellany that celebrated language, whimsy and the pleasure of a well-timed absurdity.

Enduring Appeal
By Request remains a useful example of interwar British comic prose and of a particular strand of gentle, literate humour that prefers implication and cleverness to slapstick. For those interested in the evolution of the newspaper column and the art of short comic pieces, Morton's collection demonstrates how sustained humor can be built from concise observations and formal playfulness.
The book still reads as a compact companion for anyone who enjoys conversational wit, surprise inversions and the steady mischief of a skilled stylist. It captures the brief, delightful moments when a sentence turns a small truth into an unexpected joke and leaves the reader smiling at both the world and the writer's craft.