Vintage Love and Other Essays

Jolyon Nuttall, a retired newspaperman from a family steeped in literature, writes with feeling and depth – and often with wry humour – about episodes in his life as diverse as the romanticism of early loves through to the agonies of boiling an egg and learning to live alone after a long marriage. He has spurned the autobiography in favour of the essay as the Orwellian literary form in which to record these and other significant happenings in his life. Jolyon Nuttall is anything but a mediocre talent. From Professor Achille Mbembe, widely recognised thinker and writer who has received worldwide acclaim for his contributions to the discourse on Africa: “Writing in the first-person singular is one of the few means through which ordinary people can democratically engage with history. In this manuscript, Jolyon Nuttall offers a vivid example of the way one human being organises his experience of time, thinks of the temporal structure of his own actions, encounters and experiences and ultimately curates his own life. In a style of writing whose clarity and precision are unmatched, he gives ordinary people, places and events a name and a face, turning history itself into society’s memory.” From Denis Beckett, wordsmith, author, columnist: “I hardly ever read anything to the end and, if I do, I feel captive. This one took me swimmingly to page The Last. My overall impression is of a life well lived, extremely elegantly told and reassuring us that some things are as they seem to be.”