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 ]
David Walliams and Tony Ross' The World's Worst Parents (HarperCollins) zipped upwards 11 places to the Amazon Charts' Most-Sold: Fiction top spot, as Mrs Hinch's memoir This is Me (Michael Joseph), due to be released in October, swept straight to the top of Most-Sold: Non-Fiction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-08 08:45:20 UTC ]
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Virago has acquired I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown in an eight-way auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-07 21:39:52 UTC ]
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Viking has pre-empted a “remarkable” memoir by lawyer Qian Julie Wang about her childhood spent in severe poverty as an undocumented Chinese immigrant in Brooklyn. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-07 18:57:02 UTC ]
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The dubious genre of Trump tell-all memoirs has a new member: Melania & Me, written by a previous advisor to Melania Trump, which will be published by the Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books on September 1. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, once a confidante of the First Lady, fell out with... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-07-07 18:28:06 UTC ]
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Michele Harper’s memoir could not be more timely. Also, if you think your job is stressful, take a walk in this author’s white coat. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-07-07 11:16:04 UTC ]
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TV presenter Phillip Schofield has revealed he is publishing his autobiography with Michael Joseph this autumn. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-07 10:04:39 UTC ]
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A memoir from a Twitter celebrity doesn’t name names, but it does provide an entertaining back story. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-07-07 09:00:09 UTC ]
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It has been a TV film, a play and now the chef's memoir has been adapted to help a local theatre. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2020-07-06 23:02:05 UTC ]
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Crawford’s memoir looks back at her own assault at a prestigious boarding school. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-07-05 08:02:09 UTC ]
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“Surely some revelation is at hand.” ¤ A MEMOIR BY the journalist and sportswriter Simon Kuper appeared in the Financial Times in late July last year. It was about Kuper’s time at Oxford from the late 1980s onward, when he overlapped with Boris Johnson and Rory Stewart at Balliol College. Young... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-07-02 13:00:48 UTC ]
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Michael Dirda is taking a vacation next month, and he’s already getting his to-be-read pile in order. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-07-01 16:17:23 UTC ]
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“Becoming Duchess Goldblatt” is a memoir by the writer behind a beloved fictional character whose fans include Lyle Lovett and Celeste Ng. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-07-01 14:20:37 UTC ]
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Simon & Schuster is to publish the memoir of renowned actor Sir Patrick Stewart. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-01 10:22:58 UTC ]
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A New York state judge has temporarily blocked Mary Trump and Simon & Schuster from "publishing, printing or distributing" her memoir Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's most Dangerous Man. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-30 20:33:21 UTC ]
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Rock star Lenny Kravitz has written Let Love Rule, a memoir covering the first 25 years of his life, to be published by Sphere in the UK. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-30 18:47:37 UTC ]
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The 80-year-old Sci-Fi icon's book will cover everything from "Star Trek" to his work on "American Dad." Continue reading at HuffPost
[ HuffPost | 2020-06-30 18:18:47 UTC ]
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The Trump family has filed a new lawsuit in the US to block the publication of Mary Trump's forthcoming exposé. It comes after Queen's County Surrogate Court dismissed the first motion on 23rd June. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-29 21:41:26 UTC ]
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Robert Trump takes his bid to stop publication of Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough to the New York supreme courtDonald Trump’s brother is making a second attempt to block publication of the much-anticipated book by their niece Mary Trump, about “the damaged man who currently occupies the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-06-29 11:28:44 UTC ]
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NEAL POLLACK, known to his fans as “The Greatest Living American Writer,” has had many incarnations in his literary life, from novelist to mystery writer to prolific memoirist. First, in his 2008 memoir Alternadad, Pollack reflects on his recent fatherhood and its incompatibility with his grumpy... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-06-28 15:00:57 UTC ]
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HQ has acquired a memoir by the co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party Catherine Mayer and her mother Anne Mayer Bird, written after they were both widowed within weeks of each other just before the Covid-19 lockdown. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-28 14:16:03 UTC ]
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