Picador acquires Nina Stibbe’s new work of non-fiction
Went to London, Took the Dog: A Diary will come out in November 2023.
Ten years on from Nina Stibbe's much beloved and prize-winning first book, Love, Nina, Picador will be publishing her diary that chronicles her return to London in her sixty-first year.
With an empty nest at home and her dog, Peggy, by her side, Nina thinks it might be time for a change. And so, on discovering that the novelist Deborah Moggach is looking for a lodger, Nina heads off to her old North London stamping ground, to the city she has always loved but that might have changed quite a bit since she last took up residence. . .
‘I am over the moon that we get to publish Nina Stibbe's utterly delicious new book at Picador. Went to London, Took the Dog is the book Nina was born to write. It is one of the funniest books she's ever written but also very moving and, as ever with Nina, her prose and her observations are completely inimitable. I can't wait for all those fans of Love, Nina to read it.’
Mary Mount, Picador Publisher
‘Mary Mount took a massive punt on a bunch of my old letters in 2013 and did reasonable job, so it’s only decent to give her another run out.’
Nina Stibbe
Went to London, Took the Dog: A Diary
by Nina Stibbe
How do I get rid of the mosquitoes infesting the garden? Should my kids be drinking so much? And why the f*** doesn’t anyone in North London know how to clean up after their dog?
These are just some of the questions plaguing Nina Stibbe as she makes her return to London, reflecting on what it means to turn your whole life around aged sixty. Whether it’s dinner parties with the great and the good of the London literati, micromanaging her son’s online dating profile, or avoiding peak times at the launderette, Nina Stibbe’s utterly inimitable wit is ever present throughout this diary, forty years after the Love, Nina years.
Author image by Eva Stibbe