Stare Back and Smile

The "New Avengers" made Joanna Lumley a household name - immensely popular (as much with women as men), intelligent and glamorous, she has through her journalism proved herself to be a fine writer too. She has now decided to write her memoirs, which will be her first book, and promises to put her in a writing league with Bogarde and Mortimer. The story begins in Kashmir, where she was born, and then Malaya where she attended the army school in Kuala Lumpur. After boarding school in Sussex, she joined the Swinging Sixties, with a flat in Earls Court and a string of modelling jobs: this was the London of Biba, Nick's diner and the Marquee - of Mick Jagger and David Bailey. She became pregnant and, most unusually for those days, decided to bring up her child, a boy, on her own. Her career declined for a while, but then unexpectedly she landed the New Avengers job.