Ideal fathers, cruel fathers, puffed-up-with-pride fathers, horribly and humanly flawed fathers: this wonderful anthology contains a whole range of experience from the amazed joy of new fatherhood, to the pains of bereavement, from the comic and eccentric Papa to the sinister and silent Dad. Louise Guinness has collected irresistible extracts spanning nearly three thousand years, from Homer and the Bible to present day, from Chaucer to Beatrix Potter, Rabelais to Seamus Heaney.