"Penguin Decades" bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. David Lodge's "The British Museum is Falling Down" was published in 1965 and is a brilliant comic satire of academia, religion and human entanglements. 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.

Author Biography

David Lodge was born in London in 1935. He taught in the English department of Birmingham University from 1960 until 1987, when he retired to write full time. As well as many works of literary criticism including the bestselling The Art of Fiction, Lodge has written a dozen novels and has been characterized variously as a Catholic novelist, a campus novelist and a comic novelist. Small World and Nice Work were both made into highly acclaimed tv drama series. His most recent novel was the highly successful Deaf Sentence. He continues to live in Birmingham.