Pedro and Ricky Come Again: Selected Writing 1988-2020

Thirty years ago Jonathan Meades published a hefty collection of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs, fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. It quickly acquired cult status. The critic James Woods was moved to write: ‘When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.’

This new collection is every bit as rich and every bit as catholic. Hence its title: Pedro and Ricky Come Again. Thirty years older, so no longer boys, but no wiser, and still impervious to good taste and good manners.

From the inexcusability of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word ‘iconic’, to John Lennon’s shopping lists and the wine they call ‘Black Tower’, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, concrete, politics and much, much more.

Jonathan Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist and film-maker. He is the author of Filthy English, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, The Fowler Family Business, Museum Without Walls and Pompey. In 2014, he published the first volume of his autobiography, An Encyclopaedia of Myself. His many films for the BBC include Abroad in Britain, Meades Eats, Meades on France, The Joy of Essex, Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness and, most recently, Franco Building.