Underneath the Lemon Tree

On paper, things looked good for Mark Rice-Oxley: wife, children, fulfilling job. But then, at his 40th birthday party, his whole world crumbled as he succumbed to depression...

How many men do you know who have been through periods when their lives haven't seemed right? How badly askew were things for them? Many men suffer from depression yet it is still a subject that is taboo. Men often don't visit the doctor, or they don't want to face up to feelings of weakness and vulnerability. By telling his story, Mark Rice-Oxley hopes it will enable others to tell theirs. In this intensely moving memoir he retraces the months of his utmost despair, revisiting a landscape from which at times he felt he would never escape.

Written with lyricism and poignancy, Mark captures the visceral nature of this most debilitating of illnesses with a frightening clarity, while at the same time offering a sympathetic and dispassionate view of what is happening, and perhaps why. This is not a self-help book but a memoir that is brimful of experience, understanding and hope for all those who read it. It is above all honest, touching and surprisingly optimistic.

“An ode to joy lost and found . . . A lyrical account of his descent into, and gradual emergence from, the horrors of clinical depression . . . "What did I have to be depressed about?" he asks. His book is a quest to find the answer - Daily Telegraph”

Mark Rice-Oxley is a news editor at the Guardian specialising in foreign news. He was born in Hampshire in 1969, educated at Portsmouth Grammar School, Exeter University and Voronezh University in the USSR. He joined the Guardian after 10 years reporting and writing from Moscow, Paris and Eastern Europe. His journalism has been published in scores of titles worldwide. He lives in Kingston with his wife and three children.

'An ode to joy lost and found . . . A lyrical account of his descent into, and gradual emergence from, the horrors of clinical depression . . . "What did I have to be depressed about?" he asks. His book is a quest to find the answer' Daily Telegraph Journalist Mark Rice-Oxley was freelancing in Moscow by twenty-three, reporting from Bosnia by thirty. But as he reaches his fortieth birthday, he is enveloped by depression and can barely leave home. In this beautifully written, moving memoir, Rice-Oxley charts depression's vicious circles, unsparingly examines his own life for causes, and with bleak honesty catalogues the terrible effects of depression on work, family and love. 'With candour for himself and compassion for others, Rice-Oxley becomes his own case study' The Times 'A bruised, bracing memoir' Financial Times

On paper, things looked good for Mark Rice-Oxley: wife, children, fulfilling job. But then, at his 40th birthday party, his whole world crumbled as he succumbed to depression... How many men do you know who have been through periods when their lives haven't seemed right? How badly askew were things for them? Many men suffer from depression yet it is still a subject that is taboo. Men often don't visit the doctor, or they don't want to face up to feelings of weakness and vulnerability. By telling his story, Mark Rice-Oxley hopes it will enable others to tell theirs. In this intensely moving memoir he retraces the months of his utmost despair, revisiting a landscape from which at times he felt he would never escape.Written with lyricism and poignancy, Mark captures the visceral nature of this most debilitating of illnesses with a frightening clarity, while at the same time offering a sympathetic and dispassionate view of what is happening, and perhaps why. This is not a self-help book but a memoir that is brimful of experience, understanding and hope for all those who read it. It is above all honest, touching and surprisingly optimistic.

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