The combative broadcaster’s memoir mixes engaging snapshots of his early career with some score-settling and a robust defence of his interviewing styleJohn Humphrys is the first to admit he doesn’t deal well with authority. He inherited it from his father, who refused to use the service entrance at the grand houses where he worked as a French polisher and, as a child, once watched his aunt get a humiliating dressing-down from the vicar for missing church. Humphrys had his own brush with condescending authority figures when he was in hospital with a cyst on his spine at 13, and an “arrogant posh bastard consultant” told his retinue of trainees it was because he didn’t wash regularly. “I don’t like being defined or told what to do, whoever is in charge,” he notes, a stance that has proved useful for grilling politicians (he has interviewed eight prime ministers), though it has also landed him in hot water.His memoir mixes engaging snapshots of his early career and analysis of the evolution of broadcasting with diatribes and petty score-settling. The early chapters tell of his passage from teen lackey on the Penarth Times in Wales, where his main task was standing outside the local church taking the names of those attending weddings and funerals, to being the first journalist on the scene at the Aberfan disaster, near Merthyr Tydfil, in which 116 children and 28 adults died after a colliery tip collapsed. Later he became a BBC foreign correspondent, reporting on the 1971 war... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-10-10 06:30:10 UTC ]
In her memoir “Seeing Ghosts,” the author recounts her mother’s death and her immigrant family’s numerous migrations, separations and losses, evoking the way grief entails a particular, perpetual sorrow. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-08-24 09:00:06 UTC ]
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HarperCollins Ireland has scooped a "unique" memoir by the warden of Skellig Michael, a remote Irish island. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-22 23:51:22 UTC ]
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The American Ballet Theatre star has written a thoughtful collection of essays that gives readers insight into what it means to defy categorization. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-08-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Georgina Pazcoguin’s biting memoir is full of melodrama. It also has an important message. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-08-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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The Bodley Head has acquired two titles from German filmmaker and storyteller Werner Herzog, including a memoir. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-18 19:49:03 UTC ]
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The German film director has announced two new books: a memoir and The Twilight World, about a remarkable second world war officerWerner Herzog is writing a book about Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who took three decades to surrender after the end of the second world war.The esteemed German... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-08-18 12:56:08 UTC ]
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“Names for Light,” by Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint, is a memoir recounted through the stories of family members. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-08-18 12:41:21 UTC ]
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Mirror Books has acquired worldwide rights from The Can Group to Christine McGuinness' first book A Beautiful Nightmare. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-18 11:33:49 UTC ]
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As she releases her memoir "All In," tennis icon Billie Jean King discusses her career, her causes and "living truthfully." Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-08-17 13:00:35 UTC ]
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Fiona Sampson’s biography reads like a thriller, a memoir and a provocative piece of literary fiction. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-08-17 12:00:00 UTC ]
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“Don’t Forget Us Here,” by Mansoor Adayfi with Antonio Aiello, is the memoir of a Yemeni man who claims he was kidnapped in Afghanistan, sold to the C.I.A. and sent to the detention camp in a case of mistaken identity. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-08-17 09:00:05 UTC ]
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In 2008, I published my first book, Please Excuse My Daughter, a memoir about my mother and me and how I grew up, and it dipped a little into my mother’s family’s history, which was rich and interesting. Her mother’s uncle, Sam Golding, developed the neighborhood of Rego Park in Queens during... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-08-16 08:49:26 UTC ]
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Yellow Kite has signed Hope is Coming, Louise Blyth’s “extraordinarily powerful” memoir of grief, gratitude and enlightenment. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-16 07:57:45 UTC ]
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In “I Live a Life Like Yours,” Jan Grue, a Norwegian professor, writes of living with a rare form of spinal muscular atrophy. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-08-15 09:00:03 UTC ]
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I was called aggressive for criticising passages in Kate Clanchy’s memoir. But the real problem lies deep in the overwhelmingly white world of publishingIt started with a tweet. Kate Clanchy, author of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me posted on her Twitter account that a reviewer on... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-08-13 13:51:20 UTC ]
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Icon has landed journalist and debut author Marianne Eloise's memoir of life with obsessive compulsive disorder and autism. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-11 20:18:23 UTC ]
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Headline will publish the memoir of Tarana Burke, the founder and activist behind the "Me Too" movement. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-11 20:11:16 UTC ]
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The “Saturday Night Live” comedian’s “This Will All Be Over Soon” looks back at her beloved cousin’s cancer diagnosis and death. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-08-11 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Yesterday morning, Rita Glavin—an attorney for Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, who has vigorously defended her client (including in a fifty-one-minute live interview on CNN) since a state report concluded that he sexually harassed eleven women—came out swinging again in a virtual... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-08-11 12:45:23 UTC ]
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Hollywood. It’s one of those locations—it’s hard, somehow, to call it a concrete place—that conjures up all sorts of archetypes: the ruined writer, egomaniacal director, sleazy executive, out-of-control star. In writing my memoir Always Crashing in The Same Car—a book with elements of criticism,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-08-11 11:00:00 UTC ]
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