Hodder Paperbacks
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton
John Humphrys funny and engaging memoir of building a home in Greece with his son Christopher.
It was a moment of mad impulse when John Humphrys decided to buy a semi-derelict cottage and a building site on a plot of land overlooking the Aegean. After all, his son Christopher was already raising his family there so he would help build the beautiful villa that would soon rise there. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything. John was to spend much of the next four years regretting his moment of madness. Sometimes comic, at other times infuriating, here father and son tell a story by turns hilarious and revealing about a country that intrigues and infuriates in equal measure.
a very funny tome - Daily Telegraph
hilarious - Daily Mail
a profoundly instructive course in the idiosyncrasies of Greek law, custom and culture...entertainingly chronicled - Saga
A sparky, funny, exasperated story that brings Humphrys and his family together in trying but also tender circumstances. - Iain Finlayson, Times
'John Humphrys was born to be combative... His cellist son Christopher acts as a gentle foil. Between them they amusingly blend the genres of misery memoir and Mediterranean escapist idyll - FT Weekend
Entertaining - The Lady
John Humphrys has reported from all over the world for the BBC and presented its frontline news programmes on both radio and television, in a broadcasting career spanning forty years. He has won a string of national awards and been described as a 'national treasure'. He owned a dairy farm for ten years and has homes in Greece and London.