Top

A Class of Their Own

On sale

3rd February 2022

Price: £16.99

Select a format

Selected: Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9781398701892

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

‘A hilarious account of life with the children of the super rich…well written…and very funny indeed’ – BOOK OF THE WEEK
Daily Mail

‘A hilarious, behind-the-scenes memoir of the mad world of the very rich’ Daily Telegraph

‘Very funny…the book bursts with butlers, helicopters and Damien Hirsts’ The Times

‘There are so many laughs in this book, you almost forget how upsetting capitalism is’
Simon Amstell

A naked Russian oligarch is spanking me in his basement. His weapon is a birch branch, the setting his luxurious home sauna. Above us is 30,000 square feet of one of Moscow’s most obscene private homes, an original Damien Hirst above the fireplace, a vacuum cleaning system built into the skirting boards. Invisible speakers serenade us with a desolate pan pipe cover of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. A light display rotates kaleidoscopically, illuminating the oligarch’s genitals in a variety of unexpected hues. Everyone is silent. Then the oligarch’s son Nikita looks at me with a mysterious smile.

‘Now my mother will bring us honey.’

Matt Knott spent over a decade traveling the globe as a private tutor. He has taught Shakespeare in Moscow, times tables in Tuscany, and is still trying to figure out how to explain long division.

With brilliant honesty and wit, he takes us inside a world most of us only glimpse speeding past in a luxury SUV. Unfolding across four continents and featuring a colourful cast of butlers, billionaires and yummy mummies, this is a hilarious and touching chronicle of an unforgettable time.

Reviews

Financial Times
Absurdist tales of tutoring the super-rich...a tongue-in-cheek observation of an unfamiliar side to London, entertainingly narrated...and full of farce
Nick Pettigrew, Sunday Times bestselling author of Anti-Social
Effortlessly funny. I inhaled A Class of Their Own. It's a cracking read
The Week
With his pleasing turn of phrase... Knott is a witty, observant guide
The Times
Very funny...the book bursts with butlers, helicopters and Damien Hirsts
Daily Mail
A hilarious account of life with the children of the super rich...well written...and very funny indeed - BOOK OF THE WEEK
Amrou Al-Kadhi, Author of Life as a Unicorn
I howled with laughter throughout... touching and hilarious in equal measure
The Spectator
Hilarious... bursts with splendid anecdotes... I nearly fell off my chair laughing
Money Weekly
Amusing and a warning to parents who think parenting can be outsourced
The Daily Telegraph
A hilarious, behind-the-scenes memoir of the mad world of the very rich
Daily Mirror
An eye-opening insight into the mindset of the super-rich...sharp and very funny...the laughs come thick and fast...but Knott humanises them even while poking fun at their weirdness, giving the book a memorably melancholy bite
Michael Walker
A hilarious and timely look behind the curtain of the international super-rich
Reader's Digest
Extremely funny... fizzes with great one-liners
Simon Amstell
There are so many laughs in this book, you almost forget how upsetting capitalism is
Tom Rasmussen, Author of Diary of a Drag Queen
I laughed aloud. So many times. Finally a book that deconstructs the bizarre and grotesque world of the super rich and is funny, smart and moving while doing it
Manx Independent
One to make you laugh out loud...Knott writes with comic genius...if you loved reading Adam Kay's "This is Going to Hurt", then you will also enjoy this
Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex
Deliciously funny and very poignant
Grace Chatto
Matt Knott is a comic genius
Reaction
An unputdownable outsider/insider account of the utter absurdity of the super-rich