The Gift of a Radio
My Childhood and Other Trainwrecks
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
The Gift of a Radio
Buy Now for $21.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Justin Webb
-
By:
-
Justin Webb
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
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?
©2022 Justin Webb (P)2022 Penguin AudioCritic Reviews
"Brilliantly illuminates the horrors and absurd snobberies of those times. A very fine memoir." (Jonathan Dimbleby)
"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)