Three men in a boat : to say nothing of the dog!

Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a T'.

But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather-forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.'s small fox-terrier Montmorency.

Three Men in a Boat was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and proved so popular that Jerome reunited his now older but not necessarily wiser heroes in Three Men on the Bummel, for a picaresque bicycle tour of Germany.

With their benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian clerking classes', both novels hilariously capture the spirit of their age.