Overview

The beloved Sunday Times bestseller - a touching, hilarious, often outrageous memoir of home-making and family adventures in the world's furthest outposts 'Hilarious, and utterly beguiling - it’s a complete treat to be in Keenan’s witty and open-hearted company' Esther Freud 'Deliciously effervescent' Sunday Times 'Brigid writes like a dream ... fabulous' Joanna Lumley 'Irresistible' Mail on Sunday When Sunday Times fashion journalist Brigid Keenan married the love of her life in the late Sixties, she had little idea of the rollercoaster journey they would make around the world together. For he was a diplomat - and Brigid found herself the smiling face of the European Union in locales ranging from Kazakhstan to Trinidad, and asking herself questions she never thought she'd have to ask. How do you throw a buffet dinner during a public mourning period in Syria? Where do you track down dog fat in Almaty? And how do you entertain guests in a Nepalese chicken shed? Negotiating diplomatic protocol, difficult teenagers, homesickness, frustrated career aspirations, witch doctors, and giant jumping spiders, Brigid muddles determinedly through - with no shortage of mishaps on the way. 'There are not many books that have actually made me cry from laughing, but this is one of them' Sunday Times

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9781526654915

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Reviews

Perfect ... surprising, astute, brilliantly observed and very human -- Ahdaf Soueif * Guardian * Thirty years of far-flung postings later, she has acquired enough farcical experiences to make this memoir irresistible * Mail on Sunday * A wonderful picaresque take on the travails of expat life, and an absolutely delicious read ... There are not many books that have actually made me cry from laughing, but this is one of them -- Katie Hickman * Sunday Times * Wonderfully funny and mischievous ... It really did make me laugh out loud. Brigid Keenan is quite as hilarious a comic invention as Bridget Jones, only she's REAL -- Julie Christie Life is what you make of it - you can't just sit there and let it happen to you - you've got to grab opportunities with both hands, or you risk boredom at least, depression and deathbed regrets at worst. Women have not been raised to understand the importance of this. Brigid Keenan rams the message home with hilarity. This is an important book, written by a very funny writer -- Shirley Conran I found myself laughing out loud three or four times a page. Quite unlike anything else I have read: sad, touching, honest and observant -- William Dalrymple She is consistently herself, an observant journalist with a beady eye for local eccentricities ... Life with Brigid Keenan could never be boring * Country Life * With a glorious sense of the ridiculous, she depicts herself as a hyperventilating hysteric, who sobs her doom-ridden fantasies into reality * Spectator * Very few books these days make me laugh out loud - this one provoked loud hoots at the rate of three per page. It's the funniest thing I've read since Jilly Cooper stopped writing properly and turned to sex and four-letter words. If this isn't a runaway best-seller I'll run away myself and live in Kazakhstan -- Mary S Lovell, author of The Mitford Girls Brigid Keenan vividly evokes both the oddities and loneliness, even today, of being the other half of a diplomat. Immediate and intimate, poignant and very funny; it is as if she is talking to the reader. Her eagle-eyed observation of human behaviour and far flung experiences made me laugh out loud -- Josceline Dimbleby The story sparkles, flies, delights. You love Keenan, the weepy, flighty, funny bit of diplomatic baggage but a part of your heart goes out to AW, her partner, who puts up and shuts up. But what makes this book special is how with a light touch Keenan exposes the dark corners, the frustrations, the dilemmas of those who go forth to represent their country. The grand houses and lifestyles hide so much, silence so many. But not Bridget Keenan -- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Vogue loves ... Diplomatic Baggage * Vogue *

Perfect ... surprising, astute, brilliantly observed and very human * Guardian * Wonderfully funny and mischievous ... It really did make me laugh out loud. Brigid Keenan is quite as hilarious a comic invention as Bridget Jones, only she's REAL -- Julie Christie Life is what you make of it - you can't just sit there and let it happen to you - you've got to grab opportunities with both hands, or you risk boredom at least, depression and deathbed regrets at worst. Women have not been raised to understand the importance of this. Brigid Keenan rams the message home with hilarity. This is an important book, written by a very funny writer -- Shirley Conran I found myself laughing out loud three or four times a page. Quite unlike anything else I have read: sad, touching, honest and observant -- William Dalrymple She is consistently herself, an observant journalist with a beady eye for local eccentricities ... Life with Brigid Keenan could never be boring * Country Life * With a glorious sense of the ridiculous, she depicts herself as a hyperventilating hysteric, who sobs her doom-ridden fantasies into reality * Spectator * Very few books these days make me laugh out loud - this one provoked loud hoots at the rate of three per page. It's the funniest thing I've read since Jilly Cooper stopped writing properly and turned to sex and four-letter words. If this isn't a runaway best-seller I'll run away myself and live in Kazakhstan -- Mary S Lovell, author of The Mitford Girls

"Perfect ... surprising, astute, brilliantly observed and very human -- Ahdaf Soueif * Guardian * Thirty years of far-flung postings later, she has acquired enough farcical experiences to make this memoir irresistible * Mail on Sunday * A wonderful picaresque take on the travails of expat life, and an absolutely delicious read ... There are not many books that have actually made me cry from laughing, but this is one of them -- Katie Hickman * Sunday Times * Wonderfully funny and mischievous ... It really did make me laugh out loud. Brigid Keenan is quite as hilarious a comic invention as Bridget Jones, only she's REAL -- Julie Christie Life is what you make of it - you can't just sit there and let it happen to you - you've got to grab opportunities with both hands, or you risk boredom at least, depression and deathbed regrets at worst. Women have not been raised to understand the importance of this. Brigid Keenan rams the message home with hilarity. This is an important book, written by a very funny writer -- Shirley Conran I found myself laughing out loud three or four times a page. Quite unlike anything else I have read: sad, touching, honest and observant -- William Dalrymple She is consistently herself, an observant journalist with a beady eye for local eccentricities ... Life with Brigid Keenan could never be boring * Country Life * With a glorious sense of the ridiculous, she depicts herself as a hyperventilating hysteric, who sobs her doom-ridden fantasies into reality * Spectator * Very few books these days make me laugh out loud - this one provoked loud hoots at the rate of three per page. It's the funniest thing I've read since Jilly Cooper stopped writing properly and turned to sex and four-letter words. If this isn't a runaway best-seller I'll run away myself and live in Kazakhstan -- Mary S Lovell, author of The Mitford Girls Brigid Keenan vividly evokes both the oddities and loneliness, even today, of being the ""other half"" of a diplomat. Immediate and intimate, poignant and very funny; it is as if she is talking to the reader. Her eagle-eyed observation of human behaviour and far flung experiences made me laugh out loud -- Josceline Dimbleby The story sparkles, flies, delights. You love Keenan, the weepy, flighty, funny bit of diplomatic baggage but a part of your heart goes out to AW, her partner, who puts up and shuts up. But what makes this book special is how with a light touch Keenan exposes the dark corners, the frustrations, the dilemmas of those who go forth to represent their country. The grand houses and lifestyles hide so much, silence so many. But not Bridget Keenan -- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Vogue loves ... Diplomatic Baggage * Vogue *"

Author Information

Brigid Keenan is an author and journalist. She has worked as an editor on Nova magazine, the Observer and the Sunday Times. She has published two fashion histories as well as Travels in Kashmir, Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City, the bestselling Diplomatic Baggage, Packing Up and Full Marks for Trying. Brigid Keenan is a founding board member of the Palestine Festival of Literature. She has spent most of her life in far-flung diplomatic postings, but now lives with her husband in Pimlico and Somerset; they have two daughters and four grandchildren.

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