4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2014
Copyright © Tim Dowling 2014
Tim Dowling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Seven of the Forty Precepts of Gross Marital Happiness made their first appearance, in slightly different form, in an article in Guardian Weekend magazine from February 2013
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover photographs: (man) David Levene/© 2010 Guardian News & Media Ltd; (wallpaper) Hudyma Natallia/Shutterstock
Chapter illustrations © Benoît Jacques 2014
Jacket design by Keenan
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007527663
Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007527670
Version: 2017-03-08
To Sophie; who else?
CONTENTS
3. Getting Married: Why Would You?
6. DIY: Man’s Estate, Even Now
8. The Forty Precepts of Gross Marital Happiness
10. A Very Short Chapter About Sex
11. The Pros and Cons of Procreation
14. Staying Together – For Better and Worse
19. Misandry – There’s Such a Word, But Is There Such a Thing?
In the summer of 2007 I was asked out of the blue to take over the page at the front of the Guardian Weekend magazine. I say out of the blue, but I’ll admit it was a possibility I’d considered long before the invitation was extended. I therefore received the news with my usual mixture of gratitude and impatience – shocked, thrilled, immensely flattered, and not before time. There was no question of turning down the offer; just tremendous apprehension at the idea of accepting. If I’d thought about wanting it a lot over the years, I hadn’t really given much thought to doing it. What would my weekly column be about?
‘I don’t want you to feel you have to write about your own life,’ read the only email I received from the Editor on the subject. Perhaps, I thought, she doesn’t want me to feel constrained by a particular format, or maybe she was wary because the only time I’d ever stood in for my predecessor, Jon Ronson, I’d written about an ordinary domestic event, and the magazine subsequently printed a letter that said, ‘May I suggest that the mystery smell in Tim Dowling’s house is coming from his own backside as he emanates his natural air of smugness and pomposity?’ Whatever the reason, I felt I had my instructions: write about anything you like, except yourself.
The Editor promptly took maternity leave, and I heard nothing more. The only additional information I received was a date for the first column, in mid-September. As the deadline approached