The British Museum is Falling Down - Couverture souple

The Rhythm Method is the curse of young Adam Appleby’s life and the cause of his children’s. While Adam gestates his thesis in the British Museum, his wife worries at home because her period is late and a fourth little bundle of (expensive) joy seems to be on the way, thanks to ‘Vatican Roulette’. Though Adam’s experience is constantly coloured by the authors he is studying, one distinction remains clear: ‘Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.’ A sharply perceptive comic novel, ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ brilliantly captures the absurd, pitiful dilemma of Catholics in the days when the Pill was just an enticing rumour.

The British Museum is Falling Down is a brilliant comic satire of academia, religion and human entanglements. Published in 1965, it tells the story of hapless, scooter-riding young research student Adam Appleby, who is trying to write his thesis but is constantly distracted - not least by the fact that, as Catholics in the 1960s, he and his wife must rely on 'Vatican roulette' to avoid a fourth child.

'A comic tour de force...the hapless Appleby remains one of his most keenly observed characters' Observer