Having been a fan of the chef Gordon Ramsay for some time now, I was very interested to read his autobiography – Humble Pie. I wasn’t disappointed as I found it a very honest and at times poignant book.

It’s interesting with celebrities that, by seeing them on television, you think you know them. I most associated Gordon Ramsay with his television work, and through reading the book, discovered that there was a lot more to know about him than I realised!

chef, cooking, Gordon Ramsay

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From 1967 eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen spent two years at the famous McLean Hospital (of Sylvia Plath fame) in a psychiatric ward for teenage girls after a short session with a psychiatrist she’d never seen before. Girl, Interrupted (first published in 1993) is a memoir of her time there and told in a series of short non-chronological vignettes in which we, and Kaysen, slowly try and piece together the events that led to her spending so long at McLean and get a portrait of life in this strange and sometimes disturbing environment. ‘People ask, how did you get in there?’ writes Kaysen. ‘What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can’t answer the real question. All I can tell them is it’s easy. It is easy to slip into a parallel universe. These worlds exist alongside this world.’ The book ruminates on society’s definitions of what constitutes sanity or insanity with Kaysen herself, despite her circumstances and location, sometimes feeling like a sane person in an insane world.

Girl, Interrupted is a relatively short memoir (my paperback copy runs to only 167 pages) but an interesting and very readable book that has unfortunately been a little overshadowed by the fairly average film version featuring Winona Ryder as Kaysen.

memoir, Susanna Kaysen

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‘Brought up by parents who were fanatical supporters of Oswald Mosley, Trevor Grundy became the youngest public speaker for the Union Movement, giving a speech in Trafalgar Square at the age of seventeen. Soon after, Trevor began to question his family and their beliefs. He discovered a new moral framework – and the shocking secret that his mother, an anti-Semitic Fascist, was Jewish.’

Memoir Of A Fascist Childhood was first published in 1998 and written by journalist Trevor Grundy. My paperback copy is just over two hundred pages long and the book is very readable and accessible with much humour despite the sometimes disturbing themes. The heart of the book is Grundy’s relationship with his mother but it also serves as an interesting and authentic glimpse into ordinary working class London life in immediate post-war Britain.

British fascism, Oswald Mosley, Trevor Grundy

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Larry Holmes: Against The Odds, the autobiography of the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world, was co-written with journalist Phil Berger and first published in 1999. Although Larry Holmes is generally regarded to be one of the ten greatest heavyweight champions of all time (holding some version of the title from 1978 to 1985), he never really escaped from the illustrious shadow of Muhammad Ali – who he succeeded as champion and once worked for as a sparring partner – and gained a reputation for being a somewhat bitter character who always seemed to have a gripe or complex about something. Holmes always seemed to resent the fact that he wasn’t as loved or appreciated as Ali and his reputation sunk to a low in 1985 when, after building a perfect 48-0 record and on the cusp of drawing level with Rocky Marciano’s famous 49-0 mark, he lost a close decision to underdog Michael Spinks and made an infamous and ill-judged comment after the fight about Marciano being unable to carry his jockstrap.

boxing, Larry Holmes

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