Father Figure: An Uncensored Autobiography

Beverley Nichols spent most of his career being charming — the garden books, the cat books, the drawing-room wit. Father Figure is where the charm stops. Published when he was in his seventies, it is an account of his alcoholic father and the destruction he wrought on the family — an "uncensored autobiography" that Nichols had been circling for decades. The dedication is to "an unknown woman," prompted by the letters he received after a television play about alcoholism: women writing to ask how he knew so much about their lives.

First published by William Heinemann in 1972. The purple pictorial boards show honest wear; interior clean and tight. For readers of Nichols, and for anyone interested in mid-century British memoir at its most candid.