Customer Reviews

Trouser-Wearing Character (Sexual Politics)

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I must admit I bought this book hoping to be titillated by lesbian smut. There's not a lot of that in there. What there is is a very good read evoking one of Britain's first media personalities with an enticing secret, and set in the wonderful detailed milieu of wartime and postwar Britain. I remember Nancy Spain from my childhood. A sharp character on the panel of BBC TV's What's My Line. Turns out she was one of the first female magazine moguls. Apart from the fascinating story of Nancy and her rise from a privileged background to highly talented fame, this book is a wonderful evocation of the forties and fifties in Britain/Fleet Street when the very modern character, Nancy, cut a swathe. This warm and fascinating story, peopled with personalities famous in my time, jolted occasionally by a few sharp barbs, full of strong - especially women - characters, cries out to be filmed, possibly in black and white, with probably Sandi Toksvig in the staring roll. There are many facets to Nancy and this book, which delight the reader at the turn of each page, for instance sprinkled sparingly throughout are her poems, privately written, which throw light on some of the deepest corners of her life and show what a high standard literature attained before the advent of television made mainstream art a spectator sport. Also anyone interested in the early heyday of Radio and Television with it's iconic characters enticing us mentally out of the back streets of our towns, will be entranced.