Jonathan Coe

Inspired by David Nobbs' superlative The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin , Jonathan Coe set about capturing his cool, dry wit in 1987’s The Accidental Woman, but it took 1983’s effortless Thatcherite satire What a Carve-Up! to truly establish Coe as the pre-eminent chronicler of British suburban anxiety. Funny but pointed, over a series of sometimes interconnected novels Coe’s wry grasp of politics and class conflict have placed him in a similar sphere to both David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury but without their usual reliance on academia as a dramatic device.

Jonathan Coe scored another hit with 2001’s The Rotter’s Club – a novel that drew deep on Coe’s teenage school years in the fringes of Birmingham – and in subsequent stories has tangentially explored characters and situations common to both titles. 2018’s Middle England pulls many of these narrative and thematic strands together.