Homework is a portrait of a young boy, who keeps passing exams and  if a changing England in the 1960s and 1970s.

Geoff Dyer famous for his stylish sentences and diverse subject matters, has written fiction, nonfiction and essays, with an interest in film, art, photography, jazz and takes a keen interest in writers and their writing. Geoff’s novel included Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, a novel Out of Sheer Rage, about not being able to write a biography of D.H. Lawrence; Yoga for People Who Can’t be Bothered to Do It, (2003), a collection of travel essays is the place where least has happened, indeed at that  time, home “felt peripheral and, as a consequence, more that a little blurred, as sort of credo, as he wrote elsewhere, that life at its best, was about wanting never to go home.  Life was about wanting to be in Venice or Varanasi, Amsterdam or California, in hotels or writing gigs and fellowships, Dyer has held residencies at several American Universities and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California. The Last Days of Roger Federer: And other endings, meditations on mortality and late style with the odd mention of the tennis star.

In Homework, a memoir of his childhood, in which page after solid page is full of precise recall, with nothing blurred at all. Dyer’s memory never fades as he remembers the names of boys he played with at infant school, the exact locations for their games with plastic swords and cap guns, the minutiae of his boyish passions. He liked collecting cards that came with bubble gum and packets of loose leaf tea, his excitement at conker season, his joy of  making Airfix models. He can even describe a large extended family of aunts and uncles with their foibles, trips and outings, the material fabric of his growing up. His world was Cheltenham in the late 1950s, his father a sheet metal worker in a factory, his mother a school dinner lady. Dyer was an only child, well cared for. He tells us watching his dad shave at the kitchen sink. Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of the Depression and the Second World War. But far from being a Story of hardship overcome, this loving memoir is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the post war settlement, of which the author was an unconscious beneficiary. The crux comes at the age of  eleven with the exam that decided the future of generations of British schoolkids: Secondary modern or the transformative possibilities of grammar school? One of the lucky winners, Dyer goes to grammar school, where he develops a love for literature and beer and prog rock.

Mapping a path from primary school through the tribulations of teenage sport, gig-going, romantic fumblings, fights, getting punched in the face and other misadventures with comic affection. In the university, Dyer gets the first intimations that a short geographical journey-just miles- might extend to the length of a life.

Dyer recalls an eroded but resilient England, in perfectly phrased and hilarious detail roots that extend into deep foundations of class society.

Geoff Dyer’s Memoir of family and English Identity is the winner of the 2026 TLS Ackerley Prize.

Homework: A Memoir by Geoff Dyer, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $29.99, 288 pages.