You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
'An inspiration to anyone who still finds old age too distressing a prospect to take seriously' The Times Old age is no longer a blip in the calendar, just a few declining years before the end. Old age is now a major and important part of life: It should command as much thought - even anxiety - as teenagers give to exam results and young marrieds how many children to have . . . I am in my 80s and moving towards the end of my life. But in a more actual sense, I have moved from my dear home of 50 odd years into another . . . the home where I will be until the end. Writing here of how it has happened is in a sense a reconciliation with what cannot be avoided, but which can be confronted When Jo...
'Honest and intriguing ... beautifully written.' Observer 'Joan Bakewell was everywhere at every stage: reporting on the Cuban missile crisis, interviewing Allen Ginsberg and Vaclav Havel, taking chunks out of the Berlin Wall when it fell...draped in the kaftan of Sixties sophistication.' Independent on Sunday Joan Bakewell's life and times spans the Blitz in Manchester, Cambridge during the glittering era of Michael Frayn, Peter Hall, Jonathan Miller et al, London at its most exciting in the swinging sixties and the world of the media and the arts from the 60s to the present. As she reflects on the choices she has made and the influences that shaped her, she confronts painful childhood memories of her mother's behaviour and describes both her affair with Harold Pinter and her two marriages with remarkable honesty. Throughout she uses her own experience to explore the extraordinary change in women's roles during her lifetime. This is no ordinary celebrity autobiography but a memoir that is beautifully written, frank and absorbing, which draws a thought-provoking portrait of Britain in the last 70 years. Dame Joan Bakewell was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2019.
Interviews
Liverpool late 1950s. This is a story of three people: a suppressed mother; a father, projectionist at the local cinema which has seen better days; and their daughter Martha. It is a time of many escapes: Nureyev defects in London; Gagarin escapes the earth's atmosphere to be the first man in space; the Beatles escape the dreariness of Liverpool to seek their fortune in Hamburg. In Britain the drab 50s are giving way to the lively 60s and the young sense it. With shades of Billy Liar, and Absolute Beginners, this novel brilliantly captures that longing for freedom. Sixteen year old Martha is leaving home.
'Betrayal is a new departure and a bold one . . . Pinter has found a way of making memory active and dramatic, giving an audience the experience of the mind's accelerating momentum as it pieces together the past with a combination of curiosity and regret. He shows man betrayed not only by man, but by time - a recurring theme which has found its proper scenic correlative . . . Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with a sardonic forgiveness . . . a master craftsman honouring his talent by setting it new, difficult tasks' New Society 'There is hardly a line into which desire, pain, alarm, sorrow, rage or some kind of blend of feelings has not been compressed, like volat...
Built loosely on her much-loved Guardian column - Just 70 The View from Here is Bakewell's discerning and heartwarming account of life at 70 and beyond. A household name and a popular radio and TV broadcaster, Bakewell is the ideal ambassador for challenging what being 70 can mean for women today. All of life, including the taboos of old age, are here - work, family, love, sex, body and death - written about with humour, warmth, and Bakewell's characteristic verve and intelligence.
Journalist and television producer Will Wyatt's account of growing up in Oxford in the 1940s and 1950s is a delightful, absorbing read.... He writes with fondness and humour, recalling the simple pleasures of England in the period.' -The Lady, 'Book of the Week' 'A very enjoyable read. Joyful and often very funny, the story moves along at a constantly entertaining pace. It's a great celebration of growing up.' -Michael Palin 'This is a remarkable memoir. Oxford Boy offers us a complete picture of a family's way of life. Aunts and uncles crowd its pages: tales of bricklaying, betting, school friendships and corner shops... all recalled fondly and evocatively. This is not academic Oxford, but ...
60 really is the new 40 - and the over 60s are the largest grouping in all churches. With humour, honesty and monastic insights, this guide explores the spirituality of growing older and the gifts that wait to be discovered.
Joan Bakewell has led a varied, sometimes breathless life: she has been a teacher, copywriter, studio manager, broadcaster, journalist, the government's Voice of Older People and chair of the theatre company Shared Experience. She has written four radio plays, two novels and an autobiography - The Centre of The Bed. Now in her 80s, she is still broadcasting. Though it may look as though she is now part of the establishment - a Dame, President of Birkbeck College, a Member of the House of Lords as Baroness Bakewell of Stockport - she's anything but and remains outspoken and courageous. In Stop the Clocks, she muses on all she has lived through, how the world has changed and considers the thin...
The Great Post Office Scandal is the extraordinary story behind the recent ITV drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office. This gripping page-turner recounts how thousands of subpostmasters were accused of theft and false accounting on the back of evidence from Horizon, the flawed computer system designed by Fujitsu, and how a group of them, led by Alan Bates, took their fight to the High Court. Their eventual victory in court vindicated their claims about the defects of the software and exposed the heavy handed attempts by the Post Office to suppress them. The book also chronicles how successive senior managers, business leaders, lawyers, civil servants and Government ministers, at best faile...