The Gift of a Radio

Reviews / Votes

One of my books of the year: beautifully written. -- Alan Johnson * New Statesman * A gripping memoir ... fascinating and hugely entertaining. It's extremely thoughtful and shockingly honest. -- Christina Patterson * Sunday Times * A crisp, unself-pitying memoir of a 'trainwreck' youth ... I've always likes Webb on the radio. But I like him much more after reading this book. He offers precisely the kind of brisk honesty and considered analysis he expects from his interviewees. Our politicians should all read it, and step up their game. -- Helen Brown * The Telegraph * [Justin Webb's] affability and easy manner seems even more remarkable after reading [his] memoir, The Gift Of A Radio. The subtitle is My Childhood And Other Train Wrecks, which is apt: the experiences of his formative years would have driven most children completely off the rails * Daily Mail * Moving, darkly hilarious ... In his mother, Gloria Crocombe, Webb records a great tragicomic character. -- Melanie Reid * The Times * This is not a misery memoir, but some painful introspection feeds [Justin Webb's] frank and lightly handled accounts of damage. It makes for engrossing reading. -- Norma Clarke * TLS * This is very, very good. It is not only a vivid portrait of Justin Webb's young life but, deftly, of those times as well. He has a light touch but writes with great sensitivity, insight, and wit. It is touchingly self-revelatory but never mawkish. The absurd snobberies of the class into which he was born and reared are brilliantly illuminated. The portrait of his mother is painful and touching, tender and anguished. He is never self-pitying or self-regarding but there is much raw pain as well as candour in what he writes. A very fine memoir indeed. -- Jonathan Dimbleby On radio and television, Justin Webb comes across as one of this country's most relaxed and affable broadcasters. This moving and frank memoir tells a different 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 when the country was at its most stagnant and grey. But it is also a story of hope and how the gift of a radio changed the life of an unhappy little boy and put him on the road to becoming one of Britain's most trusted journalists. -- Misha Glenny, author of McMafia Justin is a great broadcaster because he sounds like a real human being. This hugely entertaining book helps explain why. -- John Humphrys I was gripped. This perfectly captures the unique in-betweenness of the 1970s. Justin Webb is both generous and critical, measured yet fierce in this account of an extraordinary childhood. -- Richard Beard, author of Sad Little Men and The Day That Went Missing