The Gift of a Radio My Childhood and Other Train Wrecks

Paperback (02 Feb 2023)

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Publisher's Synopsis

'Searingly honest... gripping... fascinating and hugely entertaining.'- Sunday Times

'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

'A crisp, unself-pitying memoir of a 'trainwreck' youth ... I've always likes Webb on the radio. But I like him much more after reading this book. He offers precisely the kind of brisk honesty and considered analysis he expects from his interviewees. Our politicians should all read it, and step up their game.' -Telegraph
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Justin Webb's childhood in the 1970s 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.

Candid, unsparing and darkly funny, Justin Webb's memoir is as much a portrait of a troubled era as it is the story of a dysfunctional childhood, shaping the urbane and successful radio presenter we know and love now.
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'I thoroughly enjoyed Justin Webb's bonkers childhood. He captures the middle class of the age with a tenacity only possible in one of its victims.' -Jeremy Paxman

Book information

ISBN: 9781804990896
Publisher: Transworld
Imprint: Penguin Books
Pub date:
DEWEY: 791.44028092
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 245
Weight: 184g
Height: 127mm
Width: 199mm
Spine width: 20mm