Nick Hornby's Blog

The last sentence of the novel I have just finished (SPOILER ALERT):

"Everything had gone wrong, and he had succeeded at nothing, and he was never going to have any kind of life at all."

Hey, thanks, literary fiction! Again! I wish the author had found a way to move that line somewhere up towards the beginning, thus saving me a lot of trouble.

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Now that 'An Education' is out on general release, we have a never-ending queue of people happy to tell us where we have made mistakes with early-60s period detail. My mother-in-law is very anxious about a Pyrex dish in an early scene. (The word 'Pyrex' was invented by the glassware company in 1915.) Somebody else was troubled by the appearance of a tea-bag. (If you care, the tea-bag celebrated its one hundredth birthday this year.) A film critic who gave us a five-star review told...

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TALES FROM THE ROAD 1:

I am on a train from the south coast back to London. Across the aisle, three elderly passengers, two women and a man, buy coffee from the trolley.
"What you do," says the elderly man to his friends, "Is, you sip through the hole in the top of the lid."
The two elderly women give it a go, tentatively at first, and pronounce themselves amazed and delighted at this technological breakthrough.
"I only found that out myself when I went to Hastings," said the man.
What happened...

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The first episode of 'The Richest Man In Britain' is on Radio 4 this Friday at 11.30. I am not entirely clear whether that's in the morning or in the evening, but I don't suppose it matters much, what with iPlayers and iTunes and so on. You could go to the cinema to see 'An Education', come home, and turn on the radio. Or the computer.

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It has been a busy couple of months, what with one thing and another, hence the lack of blogging. 'An Education' opens in UK cinemas today, which means that my promotional work is finally done. Thanks to our security-conscious government, I am able to trace readers of this blog who haven't paid to see the film in a cinema; I'll give you a couple of weeks, but after that you'll be named and shamed. If you need any further encouragement, we have received universally positive reviews in the UK, ...

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Nick Hornby will be joining us LIVE this Thursday lunchtime to answer all YOUR burning questions on AuthorsLive.

Everything you ever wanted to ask one of the best writers in the UK, Nick Hornby can be answered LIVE at the click of a mouse. Get chatting about his new novel, Juliet, Naked, his film, An Education, out later this month, and there may be a bit of football in there too. Or maybe you want to know where Nick gets his ideas from? Does he use a pen or a computer? Or where does he...

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I'm off for a couple of weeks to the US, to read from 'Juliet, Naked'.

Please, PLEASE come and say hello:

September 29th in New York

Barnes & Noble ­ Union Square, 7:00 PM

September 30th in Boston

Brookline Booksmith, 6:00 PM

Location: Coolidge Theater

October 1st in Washington, DC

Politics & Prose, 7:00 PM

October 6th in Los Angeles

Book Soup, 7:30 PM

Location: Skirball Cultural Center

October 7th in El Cerrito, CA

Barnes & Noble ­ El Cerrito, 7:00 PM

October 8th in San Francisco
City Arts ...

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Last night, at the 'Juliet, Naked' signing in Selfridges, a nice woman told me that we'd met before, a few years ago, at another event.
"You gave me some advice when I was applying to college."
"What did I say?"
"I had two choices, and you told me to go for the less prestigious one because I'd enjoy the work more."
"What did you do?"
"I ignored you, and went to the more prestigious one."
"And?"
"I hated every moment of it."
We both laughed uproariously, but inside, I was seething. Really, what is...

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In Sundance, it was Uma Therman; at Toronto last weekend, where 'An Education' was showing as part of the Film Festival, it was Penelope Cruz who asked me for a light. This is all very difficult. Like most smokers, I don't intend to smoke forever, but where's the incentive to give up here? If I quit, none of the world's most beautiful women would approach me randomly at parties or press conferences.

"Oh, stop with the false modesty," I hear you say, and I can see where you're coming from. But ...

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Juliet, Naked signing on Wednesday 16th September at 5.30-6.30pm at W H Smiths, Selfridges, 400 Oxford Street, London, W1A 1AB.

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