Low Life: Irreverent Reflections from the Bottom of a Glass

By the end of the book you have quite an insight into the life and times of Soho's very own Jeffery Bernard. He feels like a constant companion as you go through his ups and downs (mostly downs it has to be said). I wish I could have met him.

This is the real Jeffrey Bernard - in his own words. I was lucky to count him as a friend... surprisingly I also ended up in his Sunday Mirror column after a conversation in The Coach and Horses.Despite some of his failings Jeff was such a lovely bloke.

Jeffrey Bernard’s writings are by turns hilarious, acerbic, self-excoriating, bitter and very sad. I had read only a little of him before now and I’m very glad to have a chance to read more, but it’s a mixed experience for me.This is a collection of Bernard’s weekly columns for the Spectator which he wrote for about twenty years from 1975 almost until his death from the effects of alcohol abuse. Many of them recount anecdotes of his chaotic life and of the fellow drinkers and other “low life” with whom he associated. The writing is brilliant: it is poised, elegant, witty and (certainly about himself) uncompromisingly frank. There are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments and plenty of amusing ones, but there is also a fundamental bleakness under the devil-may-care facade which, in quantity, became quite hard to take. As one might expect, his attitudes, especially toward women, are anything but enlightened and even making allowances for the prevailing views of the period the sexism and misogyny are pretty repellent at times. Set against this is his refusal to have anything to do with pomposity and pretentiousness, and his skewering of them can be very enjoyable.This is definitely a book to dip into. I can see the appeal of one of these articles per week (or less, because he was frequently and famously “unwell”); too many together left me feeling a bit desolate and rather soiled. The collection has many redeeming features, including the sheer excellence of the prose, but for me needs to be handled with a little care.(My thanks to Duckworth Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Jeff Bernard on his rollercoaster drunken escapades and wry acceptance of his low life journey through Soho and the country...

Unconventional, outrageous and brilliant. An antidote to modern life.

I thoroughly enjoyed Jeffrey Bernard's short stories of his somewhat unconventional life.

Excellent book full of outrageous anecdotes

Its hilarious reading a load of clapped out splenetic old clowns claiming this will offend the 'snowflakes'. Bernard didn't then and he doesn't now. What horrible sour people you must all be. Like a lot of young Lefties I read and enjoyed the old Spectator very much indeed, before the Barclays destroyed it (and the Telegraph, ditto). As many have pointed out apart from being such a wonderful writer and storyteller, he lacks the sheer nastiness of most hacks nowadays and especially the rottweiller right wing attack dogs on the awful Speccie now, who imagine Bernard was all about drink and cigs. This anthology is beautiful observant very VERY funny and often very moving. He was clearly much loved and had a huge gift for friendship even though by his own admission he was capable of dreadful behaviour and sometimes cruelty in his cups, and in his illnesses. He thought his best subject was loss and he was right - even though the losses were often self inflicted. I used to see him around Soho and spoke to him a couple of times. He was drunk.

Um cronista que deixou saudades pela sua escrita elegante e por vezes corrosiva. Excelente prosa. Muita classe. Recomendo vivamente.

This book has been unavailable for many years.A pleasure.

Unbelievably hilarious, and appropriately characterized as a slow motion suicide letter in 600 word installments. This is one of the funniest books you can find. And, amazingly, it's more uplifting than sad. A real testament to the ironies of the human condition.