'I suppose my luck is You,Ann and Dad and more so if I could really write.'Annie Eliza CourtenayTom Courtenay was born in Hull in 1937 and brought up near the fish dock where his father worked. When he left home for university,his mother,Annie,wrote to him every week and when her letters became more searching and more intimate in response to Tom's unhappiness he kept every one,not knowing that after her early death they were to become his most treasured possession.Tom has selected the best of them to go in this book and interwoven with them a portrait of what was going on in his life at the time,in the heady days of the early Sixties when successful young working-class actors were coming to the fore for the first time. Annie's letters are astonishing - wise,funny,with a natural instinct for words,but also deeply painful. She knows she's worthy of a better,more creative life,but she hasn't been given the chance.Partly a memoir of a working-class way of life that has gone for ever,partly a powerfully moving record of the love between mother and son,partly a portrait of the artist as a young actor,Dear Tom is sure to excite admiration and delight in equal measure.
Publisher: Transworld Publishers LtdISBN: 9780552999267Number of pages: 400Weight: 273 gDimensions: 198 x 127 x 24 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'This is an unusual book. It brims with unabashed love.'Irish Independent'What lifts DEAR TOM well above the usual run of thespian recollections is that it is also a posthumous collaboration with his mother Annie,the author of the letters which fill the second half of the book,and which provide a deeply touching counterpoint of unfulfilled promise to his firework ascent into celebrity in the early Sixties.'Independent'Wonderfully accomplished...an unusual and touching memoir.'Daily Mail'Pure Alan Bennett,but more warm-hearted...one of the most moving books I've read all year.'Scotsman'Like many of our skilled actors,among them Dirk Bogarde,Alec Guinness and Peter O'Toole,Courtenay proves to be a skilled and sensitive writer.'Glasgow Sunday Herald
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