Pedro and Ricky Come Again: Selected Writing 1988-2020

‘Ought to become a classic. It is an enshrinement of [Meades’s] intense baroque and catholic cleverness’ Roger Lewis, The Times

‘One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register … Probably we don’t deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph’ Steven Poole, Guardian

‘There are more gems in this wonderful book than I could cram into a dozen of these columns’ Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph

‘Such a useful and important critic … He is very much on the reader’s side, bringing his full wit to bear on every single thing he writes’ Nicholas Lezard, Spectator

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.