Available as Hardback, eBook, Downloadable audio
29 May 2025
The first memoir from Geoff Dyer, author of Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, recollecting his childhood and coming of age in postwar Britain
‘Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny — I loved it: a piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story’ TESSA HADLEY
In Homework, Geoff Dyer reflects on his childhood and what it means to come of age in England in the 60s and 70s, in a country shaped by the aftermath of the Second World War but accelerating towards change.
He was born in Cheltenham in the late fifties, the only child of a dinner lady and a planning engineer. Raised in a working-class area, Geoff and his mates found much joy recreating battles with their beloved Tommy guns, kicking a beachball around until its untimely death, and collecting anything and everything they could find; football cards, conkers and Action Man figures. When Geoff passes his 11-plus exams he gets in to a Cheltenham Grammar School, a school which drastically changes the trajectory of his life.
“Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny — I loved it: a piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story”
Tessa Hadley
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“A wonderfully immersive portrait – observant, funny, touching – of a sixties childhood and seventies adolescence in provincial England, as Geoff Dyer takes us deep into a world only barely recognisable now”
David Kynaston
”Praise for Geoff Dyer: A national treasure”
Zadie Smith
“Dyer is one of the few writers whose paragraphs I can immediately reread and get more from. The twists, turns, and delights abound”
Steve Martin
“Genius”
Simon Armitage
Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer is an award-winning author of four novels and numerous non-fiction books, including Out of Sheer Rage, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, Zona and, most recently, The Last Days of Roger Federer. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, Dyer lives in Los Angeles, where he is Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.
geoffdyer.com