Jon Ronson, bestselling author of The Psychopath Test and The Men Who Stare At Goats, is no stranger to weird and wonderful stories which dip into the darker side of humanity. 

Jon is visiting the Midlands this autumn with a new live show in support of his latest book, The Castle, in which he investigates what happens behind the moat of a mysterious modern castle in suburban Connecticut. It’s a story which begins a bit too close to home, he tells What’s On…

Journalist, author & broadcaster Jon Ronson has spent his career bringing strange stories into the light - whether exploring the behaviour and diagnosis of psychopaths in his bestselling book The Psychopath Test, or uncovering the US military’s foray into paranormal techniques in The Men Who Stare At Goats, a book adapted into a satirical feature film in 2009.

This autumn, Jon returns to the UK, from his adopted home in New York, to embark on a live tour. The tour coincides with the release of his latest book, The Castle, a darkly comic true story of masculinity and money…

“This is a story that crashed, unannounced into my life,” Jon told What’s On. “I wake up, there’s a series of texts from my son, and the last text said ‘We left. That was completely f*cked. Everything’s okay now.’ I read the other texts, and it turned out that he and three friends had been invited to a party being held by a stranger that one of them had met earlier that week on Tinder - which is not a great start. They turn up at this guy’s house, a three-hour drive into the forest of Connecticut. This guy’s house is a huge castle, ostentatious even by gothic-castle standards… They cross the drawbridge and enter the grand banqueting hall to discover that there’s no party. It’s a trick - they’ve been lured there for different reasons.”

It transpires that the owner of the castle is ostensibly creating a reality TV series called 101 Princesses, in which he plays a King, hoping to invite 101 young women to his castle, providing them with extravagant gowns and tiaras.

“The whole thing is surprising. Hugh Hefner kept coming up - he was a big fan of Hugh Hefner, and he wanted his own Hugh Hefner-style harem of women in his castle. That really made me laugh - obviously in a dark way. He’s trying to be Hugh Hefner at the worst moment in human history to be Hugh Hefner. It’s very out of vogue.

“He talked a lot about purpose - his children had grown up and left home, and he had no purpose… I really empathised with that, because I think purpose is a really important thing. Thematically, the thing that I found most interesting was that so many of the old structures and institutions are collapsing, people are becoming ‘institutions of one’ - content creators. Everybody is desperately chasing a new kind of purpose, and I think that’s playing havoc with a lot of people’s inner lives. That’s the thing that I explore in the book most of all.”

Jon’s journalism sends him straight to the heart of extraordinary stories. It’s a signature style which has proved extremely popular with audiences.

“I always jump into these things with such curiosity and enthusiasm. I think that rubs off on people; people are swept along by it. Also, those of us who do this kind of thing - those of us who do it well -  it’s because the stories that we find have a greater resonance. Within themselves, they’re interesting, funny, jaw-dropping and bizarre, but they’re always about something bigger than themselves as well, like a small door opening to a big world.”

The Castle, which is subtitled Adventures In A World Of Unravelling Men, hits closely at Jon’s own life - and not only because he was introduced to the story by his son’s unsettling experience.

“Even when I’m barely in them, I always think of my books as being memoires, or moments in my life. In my first book, Them, I’m 28 years old, I’m getting into scrapes, I’m a young man on an adventure… Then, cut to a few years later when The Psychopath Test comes out; that’s a book where the topics weigh a bit more heavily on you. I’ve got a kid at that stage, so the world is weighing a bit more heavily on me, too - that comes out in The Psychopath Test. This book, the personal element of it was really relevant. I’d just come out of hospital - I was feeling a little purposeless, like life was passing me by, and a bit fragile, wanting to clutch onto things. That felt so thematically similar to the men that I was writing about. I thought, ‘I’m going to put myself in this book more than I usually do…’ This style falls down if you put yourself in the middle of a story for no good reason, but there was a very good reason for me to do it in this book.”

Having made his name as a Time Out columnist, then a writer and filmmaker, Jon has subsequently stepped into the spotlight himself, touring successful live shows which expand upon his books.

“I always try and do elaborate stage shows when I’m doing a speaking tour. Last time, for my show Psychopath Night, I had mystery guests. This time I’m doing something I’ve never done before. I hope it’s going to be immersive - I’m going to be playing a lot of video and audio clips and showing a lot of photographs. The idea is to try and bring the book alive, as a live, unfolding documentary on stage.
“Some of [the footage] doesn’t exist online anywhere. One of the stories I tell - it’s got nothing to do with The Castle - is a guy whose life spiralled in the most dramatic way you can imagine - on YouTube. All of his YouTube videos are offline; they don’t exist anymore, but I’ve got them.”

With plenty of radio and podcasting credits under his belt - the third series of his BBC Radio Four podcast Things Fell Apart will be aired soon - Jon’s success as a presenter is evident. But his skill at live performance came as something of a surprise to the man himself: “When my first book, Them, came out, I did my very first talk - it was at a bookshop in Muswell Hill, North London. I’ve got such a clear memory of it. I’m walking towards the stage, there’s probably 50 to 75 people there, and I’m thinking, ‘I wonder if I’m going to do this well or not?…’ 

“There was nothing in my life that necessarily suggested I was going to do it well; put me in the middle of a party and I’m awkward. But I got up on the stage at this bookshop and I did it well - I felt a surge of confidence. It was fun, and it was so unexpected. Ever since then, the reason I do these big shows is because I can! For some magical reason, I do them well, and people want to come and see them.”

Enter The Castle shows at Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, on Tuesday 22 September, and then at Coventry’s Warwick Arts Centre on Thursday 8 October.