'Searingly honest... gripping... fascinating and hugely entertaining.'
Sunday Times
*'*Justin is a great broadcaster because he sounds like a real human
being. This hugely entertaining book helps explain why'. John
Humphrys
*'*Moving and frank ... A story of a childhood defined by loneliness,
the absence of a father and the grim experience of a Quaker boarding
school. It is also one of the most perceptive accounts of Britain in the
1970s.' Misha Glenny
..................................
Justin Webb's childhood was far from ordinary.
Between his mother's un-diagnosed psychological problems, and his
step-father's untreated ones, life at home was dysfunctional at best.
But with gun-wielding school masters and sub-standard living conditions,
Quaker boarding school wasn't much better.
And the backdrop to this coming of age story? Britain in the 1970s. Led
Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and Free. Strikes, inflation and IRA bombings. A
time in which attitudes towards mental illness, parenting and
masculinity were worlds apart from the attitudes we have today. A
society that believed itself to be close to the edge of breakdown.
Candid, unsparing and darkly funny, Justin Webb's memoir is a portrait
of personal and national dysfunction. So was it the brutal experiences
of his upbringing, or an innate ambition and drive that somehow survived
them, that shaped the urbane and successful radio presenter we know and
love now?
