Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus: the long-awaited memoir from the star of QI and The Great British Bake Off - Tapa blanda

Reseña del editor

This long-awaited memoir from one of Britain's best-loved celebrities - a writer, broadcaster, activist, comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years, presenter of QI and Great British Bake Off star - is an autobiography with a difference: as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it.

'Between the Stops is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It's about a bus trip really, because it's my view from the Number 12 bus (mostly top deck, the seat at the front on the right), a double-decker that plies its way from Dulwich, in South East London, where I was living, to where I sometimes work - at the BBC, in the heart of the capital. It's not a sensible way to write a memoir at all, probably, but it's the way things pop into your head as you travel, so it's my way'.

From London facts including where to find the blue plaque for Una Marson, 'The first black woman programme maker at the BBC', to discovering the best Spanish coffee under Southwark's railway arches; from a brief history of lady gangsters at Elephant and Castle to memories of climbing Mount Sinai and, at the request of a fellow traveller, reading aloud the Ten Commandments; from the story behind Pissarro's painting of Dulwich Station to performing in Footlights with Emma Thompson; from painful memoires of being sent to Coventry while at a British boarding school to thinking about how Wombells Travelling Circus of 1864 haunts Peckham Rye;from anecdotes about meeting Prince Charles, Monica Lewinsky and Grayson Perry to Bake-Off antics; from stories of a real and lasting friendship with John McCarthy to the importance of family and the daunting navigation of the Zambezi River in her father's canoe, this Sandi Toksvig-style memoir is, as one would expect and hope, packed full of surprises.

A funny and moving trip through memories, musings and the many delights on the Number 12 route, Between the Stops is also an inspiration to us all to get off our phones, look up and to talk to each other because as Sandi says: 'some of the greatest trips lie on our own doorstep'.

Nota de la solapa

Sandi Toksvig, writer, broadcaster, activist, comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years, presenter of QI and The Great British Bake Off star could, of course, only write an autobiography with a difference.

` It's about a bus trip really, because it's my view from the Number 12 bus (mostly top deck, the seat at the front on the right). It's not a sensible way to write a memoir at all, probably, but things pop into your head as you travel, so it's my way'.

From London facts including where to find the blue plaque for Una Marson, 'The first black woman programme maker at the BBC' to a brief history of lady gangsters at Elephant and Castle, from memories performing in Footlights with Emma Thompson, this book is full of surprises. Painful recollections of boarding school sit alongside anecdotes about The Graham Norton Show and tales of Bake Off antics. And there is much on family and friends including stories of a lasting kinship with John McCarthy and the daunting navigation of the Zambezi River in her father's canoe.

Says Sandi `It's not as if all my life flashed before me; but much has resurfaced: the solace of books, the love of my dear departed father; the drama and relief of coming out; finding love; my passion for theatre; my drive for justice; an understanding of a kind of loneliness that will forever haunt me; and how I ended up at sixty years old riding a double-decker bus.'

Between the Stops is also an inspiration: 'some of the greatest trips lie on our own doorstep'.