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Nina Stibbe’s eye for the absurd is as sharp as ever

Back in London after an absence of 20 years, she’s no longer a literary outsider – but she’s still an acute observer, relishing the foibles of everyone she meets

28 October 2023

9:00 AM

28 October 2023

9:00 AM

Went to London, Took the Dog: A Diary Nina Stibbe

Picador, pp.256, 16.99

Nina Stibbe is back in London. It has been 20 years since she left, and 40 years since she first arrived from Leicester to nanny, ineptly, for Mary-Kay Wilmers, the editor of the London Review of Books.

Back then, she chronicled her adventures (minor car crashes; thinking Alan Bennett was in Coronation Street; inadvertently stealing Jonathan Miller’s saw) in deadpan letters to her sister Vic that became the delicious Love, Nina.

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