Dear London

A wonderfully original, warm and witty account of London over the past 3 decades that simultaneously charts the author’s rise from incidental tourist to internationally renowned agony aunt.


Irma Kurtz arrived in London from New Jersey in the late 1950s. Horrified by the postwar drabness, she fled to Paris, city of romance – and heartbreak . She returned to London in 1963, and her renewed encounter with the city developed into a slow-burn love affair. Irma’s witty and percipient observations of contemporary London provide stepping stones into the past, and so both her own amazing life story and that of the metropolis unfurl before us in Dear London. Rebel and free spirit par excellence, her recollections create a vivid portrait of the Age of Aquarius; and her early career is a highly entertaining helter-skelter through the Central Office of Information, Raymond’s Revue Bar and life at England’s first girlie magazine, King before a post at the innovative Nova magazine set her on a course that she would pursue with huge success.