by Michèle Roberts

Publication date: 3 December 2026
Pre-order price £10.99

Fleeting they may be, but these vignettes and portraits are conveyed with tremendous warmth and generosity. Michèle Roberts brilliantly depicts the city in all its rackety diversity, and this slim volume punches far above its weight.

‘Living in London, I relish travelling by bus. Sometimes sitting upstairs at the front, to get the view, as we zip or creep across the river. Sometimes sitting downstairs, near the door, to get the fresh air. I prefer a bus journey to one on the tube because our progress, nosing through the traffic, works like a live line drawing, creates a live map, connecting the different parts of the city, letting me see it whole (…) I take a back seat much of the time, figuratively speaking. This is not a memoir so much as a sketch of people moving around our city, whether we feel we belong in it or not.’ – Michèle Roberts, from the book’s introduction

Advance praise:

‘Playful, thoughtful, never judgmental: quietly, mellowly open-minded but with her own sense of self. Michèle is the kind of person you’d want to bump into on the bus; and this is the kind of book you’d want to have until you do. Such good company.’ – Magnus Rena, literary critic and bookseller

On Negative Capability: A Diary of Surviving

‘[A] candid, absorbing journal of her day-to-day life and search for inner peace.’ – Rachel Cooke, Guardian

‘Raw and glittering ... [Michèle Roberts] writes with such lyrical precision, such an eye for the luscious detail, that her journey from despair to something like hope feels for us like being a guest at a stupendous banquet ... the real healing in this book seems to lie in Roberts’s gift for turning the stuff of the everyday into something so mesmerising that it lifts you into another realm.' – Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times

'She is a good companion: generous enough to be likeable, yet prickly enough to be interesting, and her descriptions of the food she eats along the way are mouthwatering.' – Dani Garavelli, Big Issue

On Cut Out

'A sumptuously written and life-affirming examination of what it is to be an artist, a woman, a feminist ... Every page flickers and glows with colour.' – Amanda Craig, Literary Review

'This often lyrical and always atmospheric novel ... offers deep delights. It’s a book to be read slowly, taking time to pause, remember, picture and dream.' – Alan Massie, Scotsman

Paperback original, with French reverse flaps
120 pages, 180 × 120 mm
RRP £12.99
ISBN 978-1-9194800-0-8