Reissue of one of the twentieth century's finest literary memoirs: the sweeping, candidly told story of a life in writing and politics by the writer Storm Jameson, with an introduction by Vivian Gornick

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'When Storm Jameson set out to write a memoir, the door of her safe opened wide, and she found literary gold in it' Vivian Gornick

'Has the total honesty of the best autobiography' Guardian

'Stops you in your tracks. I would like to persuade everyone to read it' Sunday Times

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Towards the end of her life, the writer Storm Jameson began her memoir by asking, 'can I make sense of my life?' This question propelled her through an extraordinary reckoning with how she had lived: her early years in Whitby, shadowed by her tempestuous, dissatisfied mother; an early, unhappy marriage and repeated flights from settled domesticity; a tenaciously pursued literary career, always dogged by a lack of money; and her lifelong political activism, including as the first female president of English PEN, helping refugees escape Nazi Germany.

In a richly ironic, conversational voice, Jameson tells also of the great figures she knew and events she witnessed: encounters with H.G. Wells and Rose Macaulay, travels in Europe as fascism was rising and a 1945 trip to recently liberated Warsaw. Throughout, she casts an unsparing eye on her own motivations and psychology, providing a rigorously candid and lively portrait of her life and times.