The Way to Hornsey Rise explores how a privately educated schoolboy turns from his rural Surrey background to the squats, drugs and hippie scene of 1970s north London; the story is also about the intense relationship with his alcoholic, charismatic mother. Beyond an engaging personal story, the narrative investigates how a 1968-style vision of the world collapsed, and the implications this has for the author and many of his generation. A few of these themes have been touched on in Jeremy’s two collections of short stories, but in this book he steps out of the mask and tells it as it was.

‘A fascinating and candid coming-of-age novelised-memoir, seasoned with phenomenal recall and a perfectly-pitched tone of voice. Wholly beguiling.’ – William Boyd

‘The memoir rips away the veneer of the British upper-middle classes, showing them to be venal, despairing, corrupt. Highly recommended.’ – Francis Gilbert

‘Surprising, even shocking, above all beautifully written. Do read it. You won’t be disappointed.’ – Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson

‘The Way to Hornsey Rise slips down like a glass of real lemonade on a hot afternoon, its sweet and bitter notes beautifully balanced. A sentimental education without illusions.’ – Ferdinand Mount

‘Taking us from the class-bound stockbroker belt suburbs of Surrey in the 1960s, all minor public schools and gin-sozzled adultery, to the squats of North London in the 1970s, this is a book rich in period detail and atmosphere, and its account of a young man’s painful progress from innocence to experience as compellingly universal as it is highly specific of a time and place.’ – Travis Elborough