For three decades, Rod Liddle's Spectator column took aim at the absurdities of British public life - from Westminster and the media to celebrity culture, education policy and crime - winning him a broad and devoted readership, if not always the approval of the magazine's lawyers.

The World According to Rod collects some of his sharpest, funniest and most outrageous columns in one volume. Whether skewering cultural fashions, exposing the hypocrisies of politicians or simply saying what others wouldn't, Rod wrote with a fierce and merciless intelligence, as well as an unwavering commitment to the truth.

These astute and often wickedly funny columns are testament to a one-of-a-kind journalist - a writer who helped his readers to see, to think again and to laugh without restraint.