From the Castle to the Hove-l

Series

Name: The Down and Out Chronicles   Number: 3

Synopsis

From The Castle to the Hove-l brings together a selection of Nicholas Lezard’s much-admired long-running column for the New Statesman, written between 2017 and 2021. Charting his expulsion from London, an interlude in Scotland, and eventual resettlement in Brighton, these pieces capture with wit and candour the upheavals and absurdities of a peripatetic life.

More than a retrospective, this volume includes new material that reflects on and expands the original columns, offering fresh insights, context, and the occasional morsel of literary gossip. In Lezard’s inimitable style, it becomes less an anthology than a director’s cut – sharp, revealing, and irresistibly entertaining.

Praise for this Book

‘For me, happiness occurs in glimmers: being with my son in the sea for an hour; watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine with my daughter; a hug after a marital sulk; writing a good scene; Thom Yorke performing “Suspirium”; a victory for Liverpool FC; a Nicholas Lezard column …’ —David Mitchell

‘I don’t think Nicholas Lezard has ever written a bad sentence. Indeed, the majority of his tend to be the funniest and most elegantly written ones you’ll have read all year. This is astonishing, since they’re usually about debt, cramped accommodation and the increasing cost of wine. That Lezard can turn these into a joyous, stylish and moving riposte to whatever life throws at him and leave you feeling better about the world and your fellow humanity is little short of a miracle. Bless him, for his writing is that good!’ —Armando Iannucci

Praise for Previous Work

‘Lezard is a magnet for misfortune — his finances, love life and domestic skills are equally disaster-prone, and he shares his book-infested lodgings with a variety of uninvited wildlife. Rueful and funny, this is a book to relish in the comfort of a tidy living room.’ —Jane Shilling, Daily Mail

‘Lezard unashamedly takes his cue from Orwell’s essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer” with its comfortless picture of an ill-paid hack in the mid-1940s, scratching a living “in a moth-eaten dressing gown” surrounded by “cigarette ends and half-empty cups of tea”. Regular readers will be used to dispatches from the Hovel, and encounters with the Beloved, and the Estranged Wife (one hopes that they are sufficiently anonymized). They will also know that Lezard frequently has “too much month at the end of his money”, plus the hypochondriac twinges that borderline poverty and a sedentary lifestyle inevitably lead to.’ —Brian Morton, TLS

‘This is a hugely entertaining book. Lezard is, as anyone who has enjoyed his writing as a critic knows, a perceptive chronicler of human strengths and weakness, and so he is with himself. His compassionate decency shines through – as he writes, “other people’s troubles start bothering you almost as much as your own” – and buying this for a Christmas present is undoubtedly the most joyful act of charity that you can perform this year.’ —Alexander Larman, Observer

‘As a prose stylist, Lezard is the bastard offspring of a previously unsuspected union between P.G. Wodehouse and Samuel Beckett.’ —David Sexton, The Spectator