Kindred spirits: adrift in literary London

The humour of self-deprecation is peculiarly English. Few people do it better than Jeremy Lewis. His first two autobiographical volumes -Playing for TimeandKindred Spirits- are being reissued in Faber Finds to coincide happily with his third volume -Grub Street Irregular- being published by HarperCollins.The second volume of Jeremy Lewis's wonderfully entertaining autobiography sees him starting out, with a mixture of diffidence and self-professed incompetence, on a career in publishing. Along the way we see him tucking into cod and chips with Jane and Geoffrey Grigson, drinking tea with Kingsley Amis and retsina with Patrick Leigh-Fermor. When reviewing this book, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson called it 'The funniest book I have ever read about publishing...this is not merely a hugely entertaining book, but an important one'. That judgment still stands.