Robert Timothy Dowling (/ˈdaʊlɪŋ/; born June 1963) is an American journalist and author who writes a weekly column in The Guardian about his life with his family in London.
Career
Dowling worked in data entry for a films database before he became a freelance journalist, first working for GQ, then women's magazines and the Independent on Sunday.[3] He is a columnist for The Guardian and has a weekly column in the paper's Saturday magazine, Weekend. His column replaced Jon Ronson's in 2007. He writes observational columns, often about his wife.[4]Sam Leith of The Guardian noted that "Dowling's a very fresh and smart writer, as he needs to be. Stories about machete massacres or ebola pandemics pretty much write themselves: writing about nothing much, week in, week out, is the real test."[5] Dowling also worked as a cartoonist for a short time.[6]
Dowling's books include a 2001 book about the inventor of the disposable razor, King Camp Gillette,[7]Suspicious Packages and Extendable Arms, a collection of his writing from The Guardian, and The Giles Wareing Haters' Club, his 2007 debut novel concerning a journalist Googling himself (narcissurfing[8]) who finds an online club of people who hate him, inspired by Dowling searching for his name online.[9]Giles Wareing was reviewed by TLS.[10]Metro said it is "a fine comedy of domestic triviality".[11]
Dowling said of his 2014 book How to Be a Husband: "It got quite a bit of publicity in the U.K. when it came out and [my wife] wasn't prepared for all that."[12]Tom Hodgkinson writing in The Spectator called this book "a rare delight".[13] Leith in The Guardian said there is "pleasure and treasure here."[5] David Evans wrote in The Independent: "It's a rare thing to be able to write about life as a husband and father in such a way as to elicit nods of recognition among those who are neither of those things; Dowling does it with panache."[14]
Published work
Inventor of the Disposable Culture: King Camp Gillette 1855–1932 (Faber & Faber, 2001, ISBN978-0571208104)
Not the Archer prison diary (Ebury Press, 2002, ISBN0091892392
How To Be Happy All The Time: The Unexpected Joys of Being A Cynic (Everything Bad is Good for You Book 2)(Hodder & Stoughton, 2019,ISBN978-1-52-934500-1 )
Personal life
Dowling was born in Connecticut. His mother was a schoolteacher, his father was a dentist, and he has a brother and two sisters.[3] He moved to the UK from New York at the age of 27 and currently lives in London with his wife Sophie de Brandt[15][16] and their three sons.[17] He enjoys skiing with his sons, having learned to ski as a child in the US.[18]
Dowling has played banjo (which his wife bought for his birthday) in the band Police Dog Hogan[19][20] since 2009, and he writes self-deprecatingly about their festival gigs, including Glastonbury, in his column.[21][22][23]
