Product Description

In a rare foray outside that natural home, Booker Prize-winner Bernice Rubens penned these memoirs 'while I still have a memory'. Poignantly, the highly-acclaimed author, literary bon-vivante and celebrated film-maker died shortly after completing them. She wasn't quite expecting that but nor, as she reveals in these pages, did she expect to become a writer. It wasn't the sort of thing that happened to girls born in Glossop Terrace in Splott, the 'unmentionable and indisputable armpit of Cardiff'. In this delightful evocation of her own life, Rubens escorts us, with a flotilla of anecdotes, away from that armpit through her wartime childhood, her first 'major folly' (studying English at University) to stints as a teacher, lady's maid and actress before stumbling upon a career that bemused her until the end of her days. 'What shall I do,' was her constant internal refrain, 'when I grow up?' Bernice Rubens died in the autumn of 2004.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #440199 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
'Rubens was valiant, fierce and humorous ... an engaging self- portrait, her memoir is a small triumph' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Reading Bernice Rubens is like playing grandmother's footsteps. You just wish that she hadn't already touched the finishing line' OBSERVER 'Friends and admirers of her work can hear her voice again: sad, funny, indiscreet' DAILY MAIL

Guardian
'Hugely enjoyable. Rubens delivers her life story in the warm,
direct, assured style of her novels'

Observer
'Written with laugh-out-loud touches of humour that never obscure
tougher moments ... a fitting swan song to a distinguished career'