As the 4th Estate website rounds off its ‘Family Reunion’ theme, we turn to much-loved Guardian columnist Tim Dowling’s wonderful How to Be a Husband, and consider the benefits of matrimony. Tim is a husband of some twenty years, and his marriage is resounding proof that even the most impossible partnership can work out for the best. Some of the time.
So while his book is called How to Be a Husband, it’s not really a how-to guide at all. Nor is it a compendium of petty remarks and brinkmanship – although it contains plenty of both. You may pick up a few DIY hints. You might learn that while marriage is founded on love, it endures through bloody hard work. Most likely it will make you whimper with the laughter of painful recognition. Read more…
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
‘Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.’ Read more…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that many novels are preoccupied with matching single man with wife, but not so many let you enter the marital home to get up close and personal with that no-longer so-single man. How better to celebrate the publication of Tim Dowling’s How To be a Husband than to dedicate a 4×4 to some of our favourite literary male spouses? Read more…
