Jonathan Self is a British author and journalist. He began his career as an advertising copywriter and in 1982 founded Self Direct, a direct-marketing agency. He sold his business in 1993. Self's father, the academic Peter Self, and his mother, Elaine Self, moved to England from the United States and worked in the publishing industry. His brother, Will Self, is a novelist and broadcaster. Both Self and his brother have described their parents' marriage as troubled. Self has written for the British media including Country Life, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Mail on Sunday. In 2009 he collaborated with Arabella Lennox-Boyd on Welcome to Dream Acres, a Country Life series about landscape gardening. Self published an autobiography, Self Abuse, in 2001. The Times stated that Self "is a talented writer with an extraordinary family history to relate. He catalogues the failings of a family so dysfunctional and cruel that even with his talent for sardonic one-liners the tone is one of unrelenting despair." In a humour column of The Guardian, a one-line summary of the book states, "The brother of the more famous Will ODs in therapy and splurges the results over 247 pages".