Name: David Baddiel in conversation
Start: 2024-10-17T19:00:00+01:00
Location: Princess Pavilion

On the surface, David Baddiel’s childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all. Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. David’s detailing of the affair leads to the inescapable conclusion that Sarah Baddiel was a cross between Jack Niklaus and Erica Jong.
Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family’s past, his father’s dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother’s affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.
'Such a blisteringly honest book it would set fire to the word "candid" for being too pathetic' CAITLIN MORAN