Home: A Memoir of My Early Years - Tapa dura

"the book is magic... Andrews is far too polite to exploit her catalogue of hurts, but some moments really sting" (Antonia Quirke SUNDAY TIMES)

This book is several dozen cuts above the usual showbiz memoir. I eagerly await the next instalment" (Roger Lewis SUNDAY EXPRESS)

"it is precisely the frankness which gives the book such an admirbly unsentimental tone." (Michael Arditti DAILY TELEGRAPH)

"Andrews's book is not devoid of fascination. How could it be?" (DAILY MAIL)

"will astond her friends and those who have followed her career." (DAILY EXPRESS)

"lays bare several family secrets, including that she was born of an illicit affair" (DAILY MAIL)

"most of the book is painfully shrewd and written with delicacy and pathos" (Emma Brockes INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE)

"The quality of her prose is such that you are remindeded she is already an established children's author.." (SCOTSMAN)

"Julie tells the really quite harrowing part of her childhood with the same breeziness as she does her subsequent stardom." (Nicky Haslam SPECTATOR)

"Dame Julie's precise voice drips from every sentence" (Gay Times)

Over the years Julie Andrews has been much interviewed in the press and on television, but she has never before revealed the true story of her childhood and upbringing. In HOME she vividly recreates the years before the movies. An idyllic early childhood in Surrey was cut short when her parents divorced and her mother remarried. The family moved to London, and there are vivid scenes of life during the Blitz. Her mother went into musical theatre with her stepfather, who encouraged Julie to have singing lessons which led to the discovery that her voice had phenomenal range and strength for someone her age. Before long she was appearing on stage with her parents. She soon realised how much she enjoyed looking out into the black auditorium with the spotlights on her. By the time she was a teenager, Julie was supporting her whole family with her singing performing. A London Palladium pantomime led to a leading role in THE BOYFRIEND on Broadway at 19. Parts in MY FAIR LADY opposite Rex Harrison and CAMELOT with Richard Burton soon followed, and there are wonderful anecdotes about the actors and actresses of her day. But this is far more than a collection of show stories (it's not until the last page of the book that Julie gets the call from Disney for MARY POPPINS), HOME is an honest, touching and revealing memoir of the early life of a true icon.