It Gets Worse

Nicholas Lezard is an English journalist and literary critic. Lezard has a weekly column, ‘Down and Out’, in the New Statesman. His book The Nolympics: One Man's Struggle Against Sporting Hysteria was published in 2012 by Penguin Books. Lezard's first volume of memoirs, Bitter Experience Has Taught Me, was published in 2013.

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.