Brian Viner’s children are finally leaving home. Exhausted and broken, and on average £200,000 worse off per child, Brian felt it was time to look back on the adventure of being a father over the previous eighteen years.

There is nothing like the actual experience of parenting to undermine all the theories, to rip apart all the textbooks. This book provides at least some insight for the father to be, or the newly with child, into the strange and yet common, unique yet universal, condition of fatherhood. And perhaps it will offer a few crumbs of comfort. After all, if you have a teething baby or a seventeen-year-old stop-out giving you sleepless nights, or a recalcitrant toddler driving you demented, or a cheeky eight-year-old giving you lip, or a sullen teenager ignoring you, and if he or she is equally capable of filling you with boundless love, joy and pride, then you are a Dad, and welcome to the club.