Jonathan Meades: Pedro and Ricky Come Again

Shore up your bookshelves. Reinforce your desk. The new Jonathan Meades collection weighs in at 2lb 11ozs - or 1.229 kilograms to my younger readers.

Unbound, the publishers of Pedro and Ricky Come Again: Selected Writing 1988-2020, say:

This landmark publication collects three decades of writing from one of the most original, provocative and consistently entertaining voices of our time. Anyone who cares about language and culture should have this book in their life.

Thirty years ago, Jonathan Meades published a volume of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs and fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes . The critic James Wood was moved to write: 'When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.'

Pedro and Ricky Come Again is every bit as rich and catholic as its predecessor. It is bigger, darker, funnier and just as impervious to taste and manners. It bristles with wit and pin-sharp eloquence, whether Meades is contemplating northernness in a German forest or hymning the virtues of slang.

From the indefensibility of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word 'iconic', to John Lennon's shopping lists and the wine they call Black Tower, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, France, concrete, faith, politics, food, history and much, much more.

I loved Jonathan Meades, though ultimately what you will get from this book is not a body of doctrine so much as an attitude to life.

But then that is true of many celebrated philosophes too.