'Charming, touching and very very funny' Jenny Colgan 'Simply too good' Daily Mail From the author of the Times bestselling A Chip Shop in Poznan ONE HOUSE. TWO HOUSEMATES. THREE REASONS TO WORRY: WINNIE AND BEN ARE SEPARATED BY 50 YEARS, A GULF IN CLASS, AND MAJOR DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. When hunting for a room in London, Ben Aitken came across one for a great price in a lovely part of town. There had to be a catch. And there was. The catch was Winnie: an 85-year-old widow who doesn't suffer fools. Full of warmth, wit and candour, The Marmalade Diaries tells the story of an unlikely friendship during an unlikely time. Imagine an intergenerational version of Big Brother, but with only two contestants. One of the pair a grieving and inflexible former aristocrat in her mid-eighties. The other a working-class millennial snowflake. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go right? Out of the most inauspicious of soils - and from the author of The Gran Tour - comes a book about grief, family, friendship, loneliness, life, love, lockdown and marmalade.

'Both moving and hilarious' Spectator, Books of the Year 'A tale of gloriously eccentric British pensioners. Aitken rivals Alan Bennett in the ear he has for an eavesdropped remark ... boy, can he write.' Daily Mail, Book of the Week FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE TIMES BESTSELLING A CHIP SHOP IN POZNAN. One millennial, six coach trips, one big generation gap. When Ben Aitken learnt that his gran had enjoyed a four-night holiday including four three-course dinners, four cooked breakfasts, four games of bingo, a pair of excursions, sixteen pints of lager and luxury return coach travel, all for a hundred pounds, he thought, that's the life, and signed himself up. Six times over. Good value aside, what Ben was really after was the company of his elders - those with more chapters under their belt, with the wisdom granted by experience, the candour gifted by time, and the hard-earned ability to live each day like it's nearly their last. A series of coach holidays ensued - from Scarborough to St Ives, Killarney to Lake Como - during which Ben attempts to shake off his thirty-something blues by getting old as soon as possible.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED THE GRAN TOUR AND THE MARMALADE DIARIES An irreverent homage to the '95 travel classic. 'It would be wrong to view this book as just a highly accomplished homage to a personal hero. Aitken's politics, as much as his humour, are firmly in the spotlight, and Dear Bill Bryson achieves more than its title (possibly even its author) intended.' Manchester Review In 2013, travel writer Ben Aitken decided to follow in the footsteps of his hero - literally - and started a journey around the UK, tracing the trip taken by Bill Bryson in his classic tribute to the British Isles, Notes from a Small Island. Staying at the same hotels, ordering the same food, and even spending the same amount of time in the bath, Aitken's homage - updated and with a new preface for 2022 - is filled with wit, insight and humour.

Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop. Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament.

Travel writer Ben Aitken moved to Poland in 2016 to understand why the Poles were leaving. He booked the cheapest flight he could find, to a place he had never heard of – Poznan. This candid, funny and offbeat book is the account of his year in Poland, as an unlikely immigrant.

Between peeling potatoes and boning fish, Ben spent time on the road travelling the country. He missed the bus to Auschwitz; stayed with a dozen nuns near Krakow; was offered a job by a Eurosceptic farmer and went to Gdansk to learn how Solidarity rose and communism fell. This is a bittersweet portrait of an unsung country, challenging stereotypes that Poland is a grey, ex-soviet land, and revealing a diverse country, rightfully proud of its colorful identity.

'Both moving and hilarious' Spectator, Books of the Year 'A tale of gloriously eccentric British pensioners. Aitken rivals Alan Bennett in the ear he has for an eavesdropped remark ... boy, can he write.' Daily Mail, Book of the Week FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED A CHIP SHOP IN POZNAN. One millennial, six coach trips, one big generation gap. When Ben Aitken learnt that his gran had enjoyed a four-night holiday including four three-course dinners, four cooked breakfasts, four games of bingo, a pair of excursions, sixteen pints of lager and luxury return coach travel, all for a hundred pounds, he thought, that's the life, and signed himself up. Six times over. Good value aside, what Ben was really after was the company of his elders - those with more chapters under their belt, with the wisdom granted by experience, the candour gifted by time, and the hard-earned ability to live each day like it's nearly their last. A series of coach holidays ensued - from Scarborough to St Ives, Killarney to Lake Como - during which Ben attempts to shake off his thirty-something blues by getting old as soon as possible.

'Charming, touching and very very funny' Jenny Colgan 'Simply too good' Daily Mail From the author of the Times bestselling A Chip Shop in Poznan ONE HOUSE. TWO HOUSEMATES. THREE REASONS TO WORRY: WINNIE AND BEN ARE SEPARATED BY 50 YEARS, A GULF IN CLASS, AND MAJOR DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. When hunting for a room in London, Ben Aitken came across one for a great price in a lovely part of town. There had to be a catch. And there was. The catch was Winnie: an 85-year-old widow who doesn't suffer fools. Full of warmth, wit and candour, The Marmalade Diaries tells the story of an unlikely friendship during an unlikely time. Imagine an intergenerational version of Big Brother, but with only two contestants. One of the pair a grieving and inflexible former aristocrat in her mid-eighties. The other a working-class millennial snowflake. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go right? Out of the most inauspicious of soils - and from the author of The Gran Tour - comes a book about grief, family, friendship, loneliness, life, love, lockdown and marmalade.

ARE YOU GETTING ENOUGH? Ben Aitken wasn't. Increasingly flat and decreasingly zen, he knew that something had to change. So he joined a lawn bowls club. About a week later, he continued his assault on the doldrums by taking a cheerleading class. Then - with an almost entirely reformed selfhood winking appealingly on the horizon- he went cold-water swimming and was back to square one. Despite the inevitable setbacks and missteps, it was becoming clear to Aitken that the very pursuit of fun was a great route to feeling less naff. And so he made a vow to go after the f-stuff with as much gusto as he could muster. (Starting with the crossword.) Over the next year, he filled his calendar with a plethora of potentially pleasurable pursuits. He did things he'd never done before but reckoned could be fun (a pilgrimage in Spain, afternoon bingo); things whose fun-factor was less obvious and more down-to-earth (volunteering in a charity shop, sitting on a bench); and things he wasn't at all sure about but were fun according to other people (improv, wakeboarding, learning Welsh). Although the results were mixed, the author's year of making merry left him feeling undoubtedly ... better. Which invites the question: if fun is such a reliable mood-swinger, shouldn't we be having more of it?