Quite A Good Time to be Born
  • Published: 29 January 2015
  • ISBN: 9781473520936
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 512

Quite A Good Time to be Born

A Memoir: 1935-1975

Formats & editions
EBook
29 Jan 2015
Paperback
28 Mar 2016
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A memoir from one of Britain's finest novelists and critics.

'I drew my first breath on the 28th of January 1935, which was quite a good time for a future writer to be born in England...’

The only child in a lower-middle-class London family, David Lodge inherited his artistic genes from his musician father and his Catholic faith from his Irish-Belgian mother. Four years old when World War II began, David grew to maturity through decades of great social and cultural change - giving him plenty to write about.

Candid, witty and insightful, Quite a Good Time to be Born illuminates a period of transition in British society, and charts the evolution of a writer whose works have become classics in his own lifetime.
  • Published: 29 January 2015
  • ISBN: 9781473520936
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 512
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About the author

David Lodge

David Lodge (CBE)’s novels include Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work (shortlisted for the Booker) and, most recently, A Man of Parts. He has also written plays and screenplays, and several books of literary criticism. His works have been translated into more than thirty languages.

He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Birmingham, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

portrait photo of David Lodge

Also by David Lodge

Varying Degrees of Success
Writer's Luck
The Man Who Wouldn't Get Up and Other Stories
The Picturegoers
Lives in Writing
The Art of Fiction
The Campus Trilogy
See all

Praise for Quite A Good Time to be Born

Quite a Good Time to be Born is a record of success, free of boasting or malice. Anyone with some knowledge of academia or the literary world will find it full of interest

Allan Massie, Scotsman

What one takes away from this half-memoir is the self-portrait of an extraordinarily good, wrongly modest man; a distinguished scholar, and one of the finest of current novelists

John Sutherland, Spectator

As a piece of reportage from the third quarter of the English 20th century this is a sociologist’s paradise

Guardian

To call it quite a good book would definitely be an understatement

Andrew Lynch, Sunday Business Post

A fascinating portrayal of a writer’s development and a perceptive account of the changing society he lived in

Philippa Williams, Lady

This is a must-read for any die-hard fan… I’m looking forward to the sequel already

Rebecca Foster, Nudge

An outstanding memoir... Lucid and witty

Irish Times

A fascinating and moving read

Financial Times

The book I’d most like to be given for Christmas’ ‘criminally underrated as a writer

Elizabeth Day, Observer

A revealing account of a novelist’s growth and of a brilliant mind freeing itself from the fetters of religion and social disadvantage.

John Carey, The Sunday Times

Eloquent and absorbing book.

Mail on Sunday

[Lodge] captures a period of change when bright but ordinary children enjoyed life-changing opportunities that their parents could only have dreamt of.

Charlotte Heathcote, Daily Express

Evocative memoir… The exhaustive details of the revolutions in criticism, the novel and Eng Lit are illuminating…and the influential role Lodge has played in their development.

Marcus Field, Independent