by Ben Holden
‘Pillow’ from Collected Poems 1953–1993 by John Updike, copyright © 1993 by John Updike. Used by permission of Penguin Books Ltd and Alfred A Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
‘The Ideal Man’ by John O’Hara, copyright © 1939 by John O’Hara. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd and Penguin Books Ltd.
‘Stealing Up’ from Gunpowder by Bernard O’Donoghue, published by Chatto & Windus Ltd, copyright © 1995 by Bernard O’Donoghue. Used by kind permission of the poet.
‘Bells in the Morning’ by Richard Yates from The Collected Stories of Richard Yates, copyright © The Estate of Richard Yates 1957, 1961, 1962, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981, 2001, 2004. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd and Henry Holt and Company LLC. All rights reserved.
Chapter One of ‘The Code of the Woosters’ by P. G. Wodehouse, published by Herbert Jenkins, used by permission of The Random House Group Ltd and the Trustees of the Estate of P. G. Wodehouse, copyright © 1938 by P. G. Wodehouse. Copyright © renewed 1966 by P. G. Wodehouse.
‘The Message’ from Tales of Freedom by Ben Okri, copyright © 2010, by Ben Okri. Reprinted by kind permission of the author. All rights reserved.
Afterword: copyright © Diana Athill, 2016. All rights reserved.
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2016 by Ben Holden
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Ben Holden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
www.simonandschuster.co.uk
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-5375-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4711-5378-5
Typeset in Perpetua by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and support the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.
