How old do you have to be before you stop going on holiday with your parents? Nick's 36 and married and he hasn't cracked it yet...

Nick could have a great time on Malta if it weren't for one thing. His family. His wife Laura, biological alarm clock ringing, is desperate for children which means a nightly test of Nick's ingenuity to resist her amorous advances. There's Dad, afflicted with Parkinson's disease, scarcely able to walk or talk, unsure which country or decade he's in and obsessed by sex and lavatories. And there's Mum, weighing in at a formidable 18 stone (although she's convinced she's size 10) with a personality to match. Then there's the ghost from Dad's wartime past, come back to haunt them all...

Tackling a taboo subject with sensitivity, compassion and a total lack of sentimentality, What We Did on Our Holiday is about the time in our lives when we find ourselves looking after the very people we'd always assumed would be there to look after us. And it is also almost certainly the first novel in English literature to begin with the word 'toilet'.