A Love Story with Feathers

Bearded Tit

A poignant but hilarious journey into the arcane world of birdwatching by one of the most popular names in British comedy

There is far more to Rory McGrath than meets the eye. Yes, he can be very funny, basic and boisterous, but beneath the stubble is a countryman and birdwatcher... lyrical and beautiful

Rory has pulled off something rather special

Simon Barnes, author of How to be a Bad Birdwatcher

a gentle, warming, nostalgic and gag-ridden memoir... 
His self-deprecation is not only disarming but occasionally very moving, and he pulls off a romantic twist at the end that will thaw the heart of the coldest Icelandic puffin.

McGrath's tale of fumbled romance and birding evangelism is ultimately a sweet and elegiac read

Rory McGrath was born in the last century. He studied at Redruth Grammar School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is one of the best-known faces in British comedy, appearing in programmes such as They Think It's All Over, QI and Three Men in a Boat. He was a co-founder of TV production company Hat Trick Productions, and has written jokes for many comedians, including Frankie Howard. He lives in Cambridge and supports Arsenal.

Bearded Tit is Rory McGrath's story of life among birds. From a Cornish boyhood wandering gorse-tipped cliffs listening to the song of the yellowhammer with his imaginary girlfriend, or drawing gravity-defying jackdaws in class when he should have been applying himself to physics, to quoting the Latin names of birds to give himself a fighting chance of a future with JJ - the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. 
 
As an adult, or what passes for one, Rory recounts becoming a card-carrying birdwatcher, observing his first skylark - peerless king of the summer sky - while stoned; his repeatedly failed attempts to get up at the crack of dawn like the real twitchers; and his flawed bid to educate his utterly unreconstructed drinking mate Danny in the ways of birding. 
 
Rory's tale is a thoroughly educational, occasionally lyrical and highly amusing romp through the hidden byways of birdwatching and, more importantly, a love story you'll never forget.

Rory McGrath

Confessions from a guilt-edged life

'I remember thinking when I was about 14, "I hope God doesn't find out I'm an atheist".' 
 
This is Rory's story of being brought up a Catholic, going to Catholic school, being an altar boy; of the parents, priests, the nuns who taught him, the life and characters at his local Church. Until, that is, as a teenager in crisis, he abandons his faith and enters the god-forsaken world and the glamour of its evil ways with a spring in his step. 
 
But almost immediately he realises he has in the process also freed himself from certainty, comfort and hope. So his apostasy is a long and winding road which includes the coincidence of marrying a (lapsed) Catholic and getting married in a Catholic church so his children could attend the best school in the area. Its about how being raised a Catholic always colours your view of life and death and how it fuels the guilt you feel in every nook and cranny of that life, and how it provoked for him an [unsuccessful] search for God in other things; sex, drugs, drink, love, family, football and the Periodic Table. 
 
May contain traces of jokes.

Rory McGrath

Books by Rory McGrath

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