'Enchanting ... while writing a series of richly comic recollections which had me laughing out loud every few pages, he has now written a book with much more underlying seriousness and much more to say about the human condition than any Booker prizewinner could achieve' A. N. Wilson, Country Life 'Intensely comical ... contains some of the funniest scenes I have seen in print this year' Jeremy Paxman, Observer 'Although on route to meet plenty of people more famous ... none of them can begin to match the charm of the book's bumbling narratior in his Dickensian progression from weedy daydreamer, to failed solicitor, country squire, genealogist, obituarist and lurker at stage doors. This man is an institution, one of the great English eccentrics of our time' James Delingpole, Literary Review