Month: July 2020

Gill Hicks – One Unknown

Gill Hicks, an Australian working in London, was standing in the tube train bombed near Russell Square underground station on 7/7 (2005). She lost both lower legs as a result of the blast. Although very near death due to the loss of blood and burns, she survived, initially identified by the emergency services as ‘One Unknown’. This book is the story of that event, and her recovery, but also of the lasting relationships that she made with the many people who were part of her rescue and care.

Gill recovered with some speed, partly because she had a wedding date … Read more...

Marcus Trescothick – Coming back to me

Marcus Trescothick’s autobiography is partly a cricket book: only a fan could take in all the numbers of Trescothick’s matches for Somerset and England, and the large numbers of sporting stars that people the story. But it is also an important account of one man’s anxiety and depression, ailments that curtailed Trescothick’s England test career. The book’s treatment of the Somerset opener’s problems is the main reason why Coming Back To Me received the Sports Book of the Year award for 2008. In the following decade there has been a steady stream of stories about sports-people’s mental health, but Trescothick … Read more...

Candia McWilliam – What to Look for in Winter

Candia McWilliam is a talented and prize-winning novelist who has been on the judging committee for the Booker Prize. As a schoolgirl she won a national writing competition sponsored by Vogue magazine, and she went on to get a first class degree from Cambridge. Later she married the heir to an earldom. But she appears in her memoir as a damaged individual severely lacking in self-worth. In the aftermath of a failed marriage, and struggling with writer’s block, she became an alcoholic. During her 50s she developed a muscular spasm around her eyes (blepharospasm) leading to a ‘functional’ blindness – … Read more...