'Exquisitely written and wonderfully readable - There are tears, laughter and filial tenderness on every page of Tim Jeal's perfect gem of a book.' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

An exquisite and moving portrait of a deeply eccentric father. Tim Jeal's beautifully nuanced memoir is by turns lyrical, poignant and gloriously funny.

'Jeal's prose is so sprightly, his interweaving of time-schemes so skilful, and his 'ordinary' story so touching that his book feels completely fresh - At its heart is an unusually engrossing account of parental oddity, marital resilience and filial complexity.' Andrew Motion, Guardian

'This is a marvellous book: funny, vivid, immensely touching and beautifully constructed.' John Preston, Evening Standard

'A pleasure to read: unpretentious, moving, full of jokes but also unobtrusively wise.' Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph

"'Quite wonderful. I hope it becomes a classic: it deserves to be.' Melvyn Bragg 'Terribly moving and terribly funny, often at the same time. A hugely enjoyable read.' Lynn Barber; 'A gem - it is not only beautifully written, but also a read-at-one sitting kind of book.' Virginia Ironside"

Tim Jeal is an acclaimed novelist and biographer, whose Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer was published by Faber in 2007 and was a BBC Radio Four 'Book of the Week'. Stanley was named Sunday Times Biography of the Year, and, in the US, won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in Biography for 2007. Tim's memoir Swimming with my Father was published by Faber in 2004 and was also a BBC Radio Four 'Book of the Week' and was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize for autobiography. In September 2011 Faber will publish Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure, which, thanks to much original research, will shed fascinating new light on the 'Search for the Nile' and its colonial consequences. In 1973 Tim Jeal's Livingstone (1973) was selected as a 'Notable Book of the Year' by the New York Times Book Review and one of the 'Best and Brightest of the Year' by the Washington Post Book World. Livingstone formed the basis for a BBC TV documentary and a film for the Discovery Channel. It has never been out of print. Nor has Tim Jeal's Baden-Powell (1989), which was a 'Notable Book of the Year', and was chosen by Channel 4 for its 'Secret Lives' strand. In 1975 Tim was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize.