TUESDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2025
7PM to 8PM
Open to all. Hosted online using Zoom Meetings.
TICKETS: Free, booking required.
ACCESSIBILITY: Live subtitles are available using Zoom's Live Transcript function.
The Tap Dancer by Andrew Barrow
In this short, possibly autobiographical novel The Tap Dancer, Andrew Barrow charts the slow unravelling of William's impossible father — a retired civil servant whose snobbery, pedantry and sudden flourishes of absurdity conceal a deep loneliness. Between the comedy of manners and the ache of filial duty, William observes a household both grotesque, exasperating and (occasionally) tender. What begins in satire softens into elegy: a son’s reluctant love for the pompous, baffling man he can neither escape nor forget. Winner of the Hawthornden Prize, Alan Bennett praised The Tap Dancer as 'my favourite novel and one I wish I'd written'.
We'll be discussing the novel with author and screenwriter, Alexander Masters.
To aide the conversation, we have prepared three 'thinking points' to consider when reading the book:
- How much of the father's identity in the novel is performance? And how far is William complicit in maintaining it?
- How does Barrow make the petty, brutal and ridiculous also touching?
- What does the novel suggest about how we grow old — or how we watch someone else in our family do so?
This book is available in paperback, hardback, audio and ebook formats, borrowable from public libraries or to purchase. To see what printed and digital copies are available from Cambridge University Libraries (borrowable by University staff and students), search iDiscover.
About The Really Popular Book Club
The Really Popular Book Club is Cambridge University Libraries' book group. Everyone is welcome to come and discuss a really popular book with the group, library staff, and an expert on the novel. Hosted on Zoom, the book club is completely free and open to everyone, people attend from all over the world. The Really Popular Book Club celebrates the huge range of books at Cambridge University Library. We have more than 8 million books and as a legal deposit library we keep a copy of every book published in the UK, and have done since 1710.
If you haven't attended one of our book club events before, you can find more information at www.lib.cam.ac.uk/bookclub.