BY JACK ROSENTHAL - Tapa dura

"'Television's Charles Dickens, inexhaustible, ever inventive.' - 'Guardian'"

Jack Rosenthal had always resisted writing an autobiography, until he hit on an original way of writing it that excited him: it would be as a screenplay, with himself as the central character, the storyline that of his own life, the supporting cast drawn from the many wonderful and sometimes eccentric people who touched, shaped and shared that life. What a prospect, coming from the author of such memorable classics as 'Bar Mitzvah Boy', 'The Evacuees', 'London's Burning', 'The Knowledge' and 'P'tang Yang, Kipperbang', a writer who uniquely won three successive BAFTA Awards. The story moves from Manchester in the 30s - via school, evacuation, university, the Navy, the early days of Granada TV (he wrote 129 pioneering episodes of 'Coronation Street'), the 'Busby Boys', marriage and life with Maureen Lipman, fatherhood, writing the famous plays, working with Streisand - to Muswell Hill in the 90s. Sharp, funny, evocative, teeming with memorable stories and characters this is an autobiography like no other...but then, its author is Jack Rosenthal.