One on one - Craig Brown

101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, told by Britain's funniest writer.

Life is made up of humans meeting one another. They speak, or don't speak. They get on, or fall out. They laugh, they cry, are excited, are indifferent.

One on One is a chain of 101 extraordinary but true encounters, from Tolstoy rumbling Tchaikovsky in 1876 to George Galloway baiting Michael Barrymore in 2006. The Royal Family giggle at T.S. Eliot, Walter Sickert draws the curtains on the carol-singing Edward Heath, Youssoupoff assassinates Rasputin, Marilyn Monroe commissions Frank Lloyd Wright.

Circular in its construction, panoramic in its breadth, One on One is a book like no other.

'Brown's glorious book is an original and a complete delight'
Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times, Books of the Year