The Sunday Times bestseller - a beautifully written memoir by Pam Ayres, one of Britain's most-loved personalities
Pam Ayres has been a writer, broadcaster and entertainer for over 35 years since winning the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1975, and she has become an audience favourite for her sharp perception of the comic detail of everyday life. Pam is the author of several bestselling poetry collections, including With These Hands, Surgically Enhanced and The Works. Many of her poems are in school textbooks in countries including China, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, South Africa, Ireland and Singapore. Pam's books, record albums, CDs and DVDs have sold many millions, and she is a regular guest on radio programmes such as Just A Minute, Loose Ends and Saturday Live. Her own programme Ayres on the Air will be entering its fourth series in 2012. Pam performs her solo stage show annually to sell-out audiences throughout Britain and around the world. In 2004 she was awarded the MBE.
Ayres gives a wonderful account of what it was like to grow up poor
but respectable in post-war rural England. Some of her writing in
the early chapters, describing life as the youngest of six children
in a council cottage in the Vale of White Horse, Berkshire, has the
original freshness of classics such as Flora Thompson's Lark Rise
to Candleford
*Mail on Sunday*
I find her work sweet and sour, gentle and sad, and often very
moving in its wistful way ... The descriptions of post-war
Berkshire life in The Necessary Aptitude are wonderful ... The
world Ayres evokes is Hardy's Wessex ... I do admire (and envy)
this marvellous woman
*Daily Mail*
Excellent ... Unsentimental, especially about herself, Ayres gives
a surprisingly moving account of what it was like to grow up poor
in rural England without any "aptitude" for making something of
herself
*Christmas Guide to a Cracking Read, Mail on Sunday*
Highly readable ... Pam's memoirs are a masterclass in effective
and effervescent prose
*The Lady*
An evocation of long-gone village life as captivating as Thompson’s
Lark Rise to Candleford. At the book’s height, she reaches up and
touches Laurie Lee
*Buckinghamshire Life*
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