To Billy Fisher, Stradhoughton is one long subtopian cliche - a bad Yorkshire joke. The dimmer his surroundings, the more fantastic are his compensatory day-dreams."

Gambler, journalist, fervent alcoholic and four-times married Jeffrey Bernard writes the "Low Life" column for the Spectator magazine chronicling Soho life as well as offering a very personal philosophy on vodka, women and race-courses. From this, Keith Waterhouse has brilliantly constructed a play (the title being the euphemism used by the Spectator when Bernard is incapable of writing his column) which is set in the saloon bar of Bernard's favourite Soho pub, the Coach and Horses. Having passed out in the lavatory, Bernard awakes in the early hours of the morning to find himself alone and...

A teenager in a North Country town, Billy Fisher weaves a world of his own out of his day dreams. He is an incurable liar, idle and dishonest, and to escape from his dull job as an undertaker's clerk and his dreary domestic background he imagines himself in so many different situations that truth and fiction become hopelessly intermingled. His family is unable to understand or control him, though they realize that he is a good for nothing. The cast is completed by the three girls to whom he is simultaneously engaged. When he is given the chance to start a new life, he turns it down,...

Contains some of Waterhouse's most famous plays. Included in this collection is Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, Mr And Mrs Nobody, Good Grief, Our Song and Billy Liar.

No London neighbourhood more resembles the restless downstream tide of the Thames than the ragged square mile of Soho. Ask the people who live there, like Christine Yardley, drag queen by night and grey-suited accountant by day; or Len Gates, self-appointed Soho historian and bore; or Jenny Wise, former starlet and now resident lush in the New Kismet club; or even Ellis Hugo Bell, wannabe film producer who dreams of moving to LA. Daily, nightly, shift by shift, their numbers are swelled by immigrants flocking to work, eat, drink and loiter, from kitchen staff to dress designers, hookers to...

Returning from the memorial service for her husband, a tough tabloid editor cut down in his prime, June Pepper sets about following his instructions to keep a journal as therapy. But both grief and the journal prove elusive. Distracted by a problem stepdaughter and by a liaison with a man she discovers wearing one of her husband's old suits, June finds bereavement far from straightforward. And as she empties skeletons from closets, she learns there is far more to life than death.

The classic comedy of a 50s youth trapped inside a Walter Mitty fantasy-world, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar was published in 1959, and captures brilliantly the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town. It tells the story of Billy Fisher, a Yorkshire teenager unable to stop lying - especially to his three girlfriends. Trapped by his boring job and working-class parents, Billy finds that his only happiness lies in grand plans for his future and fantastical day-dreams of the fictional country Ambrosia.