The Marmalade Diaries (Paperback)

The True Story of an Odd Couple

Ben Aitken

'Charming, touching and very very funny' Jenny Colgan

'Simply too good' Daily Mail

From the author of the Times bestselling A Chip Shop in Poznan

ONE HOUSE. TWO HOUSEMATES. THREE REASONS TO WORRY: WINNIE AND BEN ARE SEPARATED BY 50 YEARS, A GULF IN CLASS, AND MAJOR DIFFERENCES OF OPINION.

When hunting for a room in London, Ben Aitken came across one for a great price in a lovely part of town. There had to be a catch. And there was. The catch was Winnie: an 85-year-old widow who doesn't suffer fools.

Full of warmth, wit and candour, The Marmalade Diaries tells the story of an unlikely friendship during an unlikely time. Imagine an intergenerational version of Big Brother, but with only two contestants. One of the pair a grieving and inflexible former aristocrat in her mid-eighties. The other a working-class millennial snowflake. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go right?

Out of the most inauspicious of soils – and from the author of The Gran Tour – comes a book about grief, family, friendship, loneliness, life, love, lockdown and marmalade.

Ben Aitken was born under Thatcher, grew to 6ft then stopped, and is an Aquarius. He was conceived by a nurse and a shipwright, grew up in Portsmouth and was in a boyband for a spell in the noughties, then worked as a carer throughout his twenties. He is the author of six books: Dear Bill Bryson, A Chip Shop in Poznan (a Times bestseller), The Gran Tour ('Both moving and hilarious', Spectator), The Marmalade Diaries, Here Comes the Fun and Shitty Breaks. He writes for The Guardian and The Times, was the TCG Travel Journalist of the Year in 2024, and is an occasional lecturer at the University of Portsmouth.