From rom coms to wrestling and fatherhood to fist fights, Robert Crampton'sHow to Be a Beta Maleis a brilliantly funny and sometimes moving insight into being a modern-day bloke.

Robert Crampton has been writing his Beta Male column forTheTimessince 2001. A much-loved weekly insight into modern masculinity whatever that might mean Beta Male strives to unlock the secrets of contemporary relationships in all their frequent glory, occasional frustration and on-going complexity. While by his own admission totally failing in this task, Crampton is at any rate amusing as he goes about his business, as his legions of loyal fans would attest.

How to be a Beta Maleis a carefully curated selection, bursting with observational nuggets on the minutiae of daily domestics and disasters in the Crampton household, and offering the very best of a sixteen-year-long account of what it is to be a beta male married to an alpha female. From his attempts at DIY to disciplining their children to trying once in a while to put his foot down to getting involved in a punch-up in the street in her defence, Robert continues to fail to impress his wife but always delights his readers.

It's a very smart, extremely funny and yet surprisingly sensitive exploration of the trials, tribulations and, ultimately, triumphs of not being young, free and single.

Robert Crampton is an award-winning journalist forTheTimes, where he has worked as a feature writer and prolific interviewer (he won Interviewer of the Year in 2004) since joining the paper in 1991. Prior to that he studied PPE at Wadham College, Oxford. He is perhaps best known for his long-running confessional column Beta Male, which appears weekly in the Saturday Magazine. In recent years, to the surprise of many colleagues, he has also become a leader writer.

Growing up in suburban Hull in the 1970s, Robert attended the same school as his future wife. Meeting when they were both eleven years old in 1975, his instant attraction to her was not reciprocated. He has spent the subsequent four decades (and counting) trying to make her admire him.