In mid-career, Michael Frayn took up his old trade of journalism, and wrote a series of occasional articles for the Observer about some of the places in the world that interested him. He wanted to describe'not the extraordinary but the ordinary, the typical, the everyday', and his accounts became the starting point for some of the novels and plays he wrote later.From a kibbutz in Israel to summer rains in Japan, bicycles in Cambridge to Notting Hill at the end of the 1950s, they are glimpses of a world that sometimes seems tantalisingly familiar, sometimes vanished forever.Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize."All writers of fiction should be required by law to go out and do a bit of reporting from time to time, just to remind them how different the real world in front of their eyes is from the invented world behind them." Michael Frayn'Whether he's on a kibbutz or a bicycle, Frayn makes acute observations and the writing is enchanting.' Conde Nast Traveller

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on theGuardian and theObserver. His novels includeTowards the End of the Morning,The Trick of It andA Landing on the Sun.Headlong (1999) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize andSpies (2002) won the Whitbread Best Novel Award. His most recent novel,Skios, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His fifteen plays range fromNoises Off toCopenhagen and, most recently,Afterlife. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin.