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 ]
Seven Dials has acquired the "explosive" story an ordinary man who went to Syria as an international volunteer to fight alongside the Kurdish YPG against ISIS. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-04 14:20:59 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Mirror Books will publish new memoir about the only living sisters to have signed the Official Secrets Act during the Second World War. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-04 12:36:25 UTC ]
More news stories like this
William Collins has landed the “riveting and candid” memoir of Kim Darroch, Britain’s Ambassador to the US during Donald Trump’s White House reign. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-04 06:17:07 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Writer known for #MeToo investigations – whose sister says Allen abused her – suggests he can no longer work with HachetteRonan Farrow has distanced himself from the publisher of his latest book after the company announced plans to publish a memoir by his father, Woody Allen, saying the move... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-03-04 03:04:40 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Dylan Farrow slammed Woody Allen's upcoming memoir, "Apropos of Nothing," calling it "deeply unsettling." She accused her adoptive father of sexual abuse in the 1990s. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-03-03 18:48:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this
HarperNonFiction has won a six-way auction for the "unflinching" memoir of Vanessa Frake, the former governor of one of Britain’s most notorious prisons. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-03 05:40:46 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Transworld has pre-empted a memoir by Jewish Dutch resistance fighter and Ravensbruck survivor Selma van der Perre. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-02 21:39:29 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The director allegedly sexually abused his adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 7 years old. Continue reading at HuffPost
[ HuffPost | 2020-03-02 21:29:55 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Here’s an odd and unpleasant piece of news: with today’s announcement that Woody Allen’s long-rumored memoir is no longer just a rumor, and will in fact be hitting shelves next month, Allen and his estranged son Ronan Farrow—who has dedicated much of his journalistic career to uncovering... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-02 20:44:05 UTC ]
More news stories like this
A memoir by Woody Allen, rumored for years and once thought unpublishable in the #MeToo era, is coming out next month. Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, announced Monday... To view the full story, click the title link. Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2020-03-02 19:41:59 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This week's book events are fully locavore: Lynell George's essays on the city's rich cultural tapestry; Erin Khar's memoir of teen addiction in the mid-1980s; Thomas Pynchon's Cali counterculture noir; a debut novel from Los Angeles Review of Books founder Tom Lutz; and a visit from Pod Save... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-28 19:52:47 UTC ]
More news stories like this
E.J. Koh’s memoir The Magical Language of Others floats stunningly through the abandonment she experienced as a teenager. When she was fifteen, her parents returned home to South Korea for a more lucrative job opportunity, leaving her behind in the United States with her college-going brother. ... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-02-28 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Constable is publishing a memoir by radio and television presenter Pat Sharp, best known for hosting ITV children’s game show "Fun House". Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-27 13:41:07 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Not many people know this, but the first memoir in the English language was probably written by a mom who cried a lot. The Book of Margery Kempe is mostly the kind of text you read if you’re a medievalist, or maybe an English major at a women’s college, although I was an English major […] The... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-02-27 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“I try to hide how unreal those two deaths are to me. No, not unreal. It’s just I can’t make them matter.” Elizabeth Tallent on death, silence and the intimacies of sadness. | Lit Hub Memoir Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer lays out a plan for the future of democracy. | Lit Hub Politics “It’s […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-27 11:30:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Headline has picked up The Yorkshire Forager, a “wonderfully wild” memoir and field guide by forager Alysia Vasey. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-27 10:30:25 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Zondervan nabbed a new book by Christian hip-hop artist Lecrae; Jordan Lee Dooley brings two books to WaterBrook, a memoir on autism lands at Brazos, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-02-26 05:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Unbound has launched memoir How to Glitter a Turd from Coppafeel! founder Kris Hallenga. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-25 23:24:09 UTC ]
More news stories like this
ERIN KHAR’S TENDER, at times desolate, yet boundlessly hopeful memoir Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me is, in many ways, a love letter to her oldest son, Atticus. Startled by a story he’d heard on the news about a successful dermatologist who had died of a drug... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-02-25 20:00:40 UTC ]
More news stories like this
It’s damn near inevitable—someone asking me “who do I write for?” Most times I say, I’m writing for a 20-year-old version of myself, a young man who wasn’t a reader, but who might’ve been had he been exposed to the right books; who wasn’t an intellectual, but was ever curious; who listened to... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-25 19:00:48 UTC ]
More news stories like this