Bernard Jones Diaries Books

This book is more than a collection of previously published columns. A good quarter of the book is new and unpublished material. It also includes many of Samara Bryan's wonderful illustrations, which so brought to life the domestic crises which propels Bernard from one furiously scribbled diary page to another. Never in the field of human conflict have so many biscuits mattered so much to so few, as Churchill may once have said. The next volume of the diaries, Bernard Jones and the Temple of Mammon will be published in November 2007. The funniest and most realistic book ever written about investment.

In this second volume of the Bernard Jones Diaries, retired civil servant Bernard Jones is approaching his 64th birthday. Making money through investing remains as elusive as ever, though his overbearing and over-sexed wife Eunice finds no trouble spending it. Hell's Bells, the share club started at the Ring o'Bells pub by a coterie of dubious acquaintances, seems to be a better forum for gawping at barmaids and consuming pork scratchings than it is for an elevated debate over price earnings ratios and dividend yields.As ever, Bernard's family, Guardian-reading schoolteacher son Brian, dopey daughter Jemima and malevolent grandchild Digby (a.k.a. The Antichrist) all seem to stand in the way of his reaching financial nirvana. Worst of all is Bernard's dotty mother Dot, who holds in her palsied hands an inheritance that can make or break the family.Bernard is an emblem for the thousands of small investors whose stories of struggle and persistence are never told, an operating prophet for those weighed down by a demanding spouse-to-earnings ratio.

When it comes to money, Bernard Jones is a bit of a dunce. The retired civil servant and amateur investor discovers that when share prices start plunging his wealth falls even faster. As the credit crunch bites, he and his share club cronies at the Ring o'Bells pub find they can't bank on a bank, build wealth on a housebuilder, nor rely on a retailer.Bernard can, however, rely on his domineering wife Eunice. A woman of persistent passion and advancing dress size, she single-handedly keeps Britain's consumer spending alive. From sustainable teak gnocchi spoons to Andalucian macrame shoe organisers, there isn't much you can teach Eunice about stocking up on essentials.Though Eunice runs the household with a rod of organic celery, Bernard is never quite defeated. His elevenses of biscuits and cakes may be switched for endive and papaya salad, his prostate prodded, his railway modeling hobby ridiculed, but he comes out fighting.With a mordant eye and caustic pen, he goes in to battle not just against the injustices of marriage, but on behalf of the financially downtrodden everywhere.For those who lost money on Northern Rock, those who were short-changed by Equitable Life and those who were gobbled up by the wolves of the stock market, Bernard Jones is your champion, an anti-hero for our age of over-achievement.