If, when one door shuts, another door opens, there’s something wrong with your doors. They shouldn’t be doing that.

Where’s the box to tick if you ARE a robot?

My mother used to say Manners Maketh the Man, but I didn’t think it was very mannerly of her to make fun of my lisp.

Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne. Men who have searched for meaning with, let’s face it, mixed results. Whither the one who can solve it? Cometh the hour, cometh the Ayoade. He brings wisdom distilled from a life lived in relentless pursuit of Truth.

Afterthoughts goes beyond rumination, past pondering, probing further than ever before, drawing from a deeply private pool of questions: a reservoir so refreshing you may never need to think again.

“A wonderful, funny book of fairy tales with a twist, with equally fabulous illustrations by the brilliant David Roberts.” Liz Pichon, author of Tom Gates

Read about the real lives of fairy-tale characters in this exclusive collection of letters between curious kids and their fairy-tale idols.

What are they doing now? Was it really Happily Ever After? Is the Big Bad Wolf actually that bad? When will Sleeping Beauty get out of bed? And what makes frogs so kissable?

Only one man has the answers, direct from the ACTUAL LEGENDS themselves: meet C.C. Cecily, Senior Secretary of the Fairy Tale Fan Club.

BAFTA-winning comedian, actor/director and presenter Richard Ayoade brings his trademark comic genius to Fairy Tale Land.

“Funny, bonkers and brilliant.” Stylist
“Richard Ayoade is one of the funniest people ever to write a book.” Greg Jenner

Richard Ayoade’s fictional quest to rescue Harauld Hughes – the almost mythical mid-century playwright – from obscurity.

The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author’s photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes’s writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.

Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes’s final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the mind of the most furious British writer since the Boer War.

This is the story of the story of that quest.

Readers love The Unfinished Harauld Hughes:

????? ‘Buy it, it’s hilarious.’
????? ‘Intelligent humour at its best.’
????? ‘Terrific, funny, nuts!’
????? ‘I was snorting with laughter.’
????? ‘Very clever, very funny.’

Richard Ayoade’s fictional quest to rescue Harauld Hughes – the almost mythical mid-century playwright – from obscurity.

The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author’s photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes’s writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.

Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes’s final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the most furious British writer since the Boer War.

This is the story of the story of that quest.

“A wonderful, funny book of fairy tales with a twist, with equally fabulous illustrations by the brilliant David Roberts.” Liz Pichon, author of Tom Gates

Read about the real lives of fairy-tale characters in this exclusive collection of letters between curious kids and their fairy-tale idols.

What are they doing now? Was it really Happily Ever After? Is the Big Bad Wolf actually that bad? When will Sleeping Beauty get out of bed? And what makes frogs so kissable?

Only one man has the answers, direct from the ACTUAL LEGENDS themselves: meet C.C. Cecily, Senior Secretary of the Fairy Tale Fan Club.

BAFTA-winning comedian, actor/director and presenter Richard Ayoade brings his trademark comic genius to Fairy Tale Land.
“Funny, bonkers and brilliant.” Stylist
“Richard Ayoade is one of the funniest people ever to write a book.” Greg Jenner

“Funny, bonkers and brilliant” The Stylist

“One book that I really think children should read is The Book That No One Wanted to Read.” David Baddiel

Have you ever thought about how it feels to be a book? To be left under a whiffy pant pile or shelved, forever collecting dust? To have your pages bent backwards or your spine BROKEN? What if you don’t have a sparkly unicorn or dragon adorning your cover – who will pick you out of the bookshop then? This is the story of the sadly neglected Book That No One Wanted To Read – can its destiny change when it finally meets the right reader? Spoiler alert: yes.

What is it that makes YOU want to read a book? Richard Ayoade’s children’s debut gives you all the answers in a way that’s silly, funny, and thoroughly beguiling.

Have you ever thought about how it feels to be a book? To be left under a whiffy pant pile or shelved, forever collecting dust? To have your pages bent backwards or your spine BROKEN? What if you don’t have a sparkly unicorn or dragon adorning your cover – who will pick you out of the bookshop then? This is the story of the sadly neglected Book That No One Wanted To Read – can its destiny change when it finally meets the right reader? Spoiler alert: yes.

In Ayoade on Top, Richard Ayoade, perhaps one of the most ‘insubstantial’ people of our age, takes us on a journey from Peckham to Paris by way of Nevada and other places we don’t care about. It’s a journey deep within, in a way that’s respectful and non-invasive; a journey for which we will all pay a heavy price, even if you’ve waited for the smaller paperback edition.

Ayoade argues for the canonisation of this brutal masterpiece, a film that celebrates capitalism in all its victimless glory; one we might imagine Donald Trump himself half-watching on his private jet’s gold-plated flat screen while his other puffy eye scans the cabin for fresh, young prey.”