Grub Street Irregular: Scenes from Literary Life

Jeremy Lewis's first memoir, Playing for Time, was hailed by James Lees-Milne as "the funniest and best written book I've read for years." His second, Kindred Spirits, was described by John Carey as "sheer pleasure from start to finish." Now he has written a third autobiographical account of his encounters with literary figures over the last two decades which fittingly caps the previous two. A rich sense of the absurd and a profound understanding of the extreme comicality of life, together with a delight in the oddities of human behavior, are the hallmarks of Jeremy Lewis's world. Bumbling figures of the book trade and eccentric luminaries of Grub Street alike are grist to his mill; his characterizations of André Deutsch, James Lees-Milne, Alan Ross, Richard Cobb, Barbara Skelton, and dozens of others are written with huge warmth and affection. Seldom has modern literary life been described with such a sense of relish and enjoyment; and seldom has the reader been so richly entertained by a gallery of eccentric portraits.