Born in London just too late to join in the Second World War, and growing up in a generation that would enjoy many decades of relative peace and prosperity, David Bouchier has always considered himselfa lucky man. He has enjoyed a rich and varied life in journalism, bookselling, college teaching, and broadcasting, without ever being spoiled by wealth and success.
An unreliable memory discouraged David from embarking on a memoir, until he realized that he had written one already in the form of more than a thousand personal essays. This book is a selection of those essays arranged by themes: learning, teaching, reading, writing, work, and travel. It is an engaging life seen obliquely through the prism of the humorous speculations, commentaries, and passing observations that have been accumulating like radon gas in his basement all these years.
Candid, lighthearted, and often humorous, this collection of essays serves as the story of a life told in bite-sized morsels-which readers can feel free to flip through on a whim in whatever order they may please.
About the Author: David Bouchier was born in London and started writing essays almost immediately. He worked as a journalist and bookseller, and as a tour guide in Greece and Turkey. Rather late in life he received a PhD from the London School of Economics, and spent two decades teaching sociology at universities in Britain. This experience explains his notable streak of irony.
In 1986 marriage to an American citizen, plus an ardent desire to escape the British climate, brought David to the United States, where he abandoned all hope of earning a proper living, became a freelance writer, and established a distinctively ironic voice on National Public Radio stations in New York and Connecticut. For almost twenty years he was the popular host of a lively program of classical music and commentary called Sunday Matinee on the same stations.
David lives alternately in Stony Brook, Long Island, and in a village near Uzès in France, with his wife Diane, and one very elderly cat. He is the author of eleven previous books, the most recent being a collection of stories about life in a French village-Not Quite a Stranger (2015).
