Introduction

Richard Beard’s six novels include Lazarus is Dead, Dry Bones and Damascus, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In the UK he has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. His novel Acts of the Assassins was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, for books that ‘extend the possibilities of the novel form’. He is also the author of five works of narrative non-fiction, including his rugby memoir Muddied Oafs. The Day That Went Missing was shortlisted for the Folio Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography.  In the US the book was a National Book Critics Circle finalist. His latest memoir/polemic is Sad Little Men, about private schools in Britain, which was a book of the year in the Times Literary Supplement and the Observer.