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Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous; Purdey in The New Avengers; Bond Girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; Sapphire in Sapphire and Steel; a castaway in Girl Friday; actress; model; writer; campaigner; inventor; TV presenter and journalist: Joanna Lumley has played many roles in her lifetime, but rarely had the opportunity to reveal her true self. Intimate, funny, intriguing and moving, No Room for Secrets is a more surprising and revealing autobiography than any sensational 'kiss and tell' memoir you will ever read. Inside you will find the real Joanna Lumley. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

i liked it
Altho written in a Q&A form it was a nice window into Lumleys life. I wished for more detail about her experiences in movies, TVand off but this was a nice light read.

Absolutely Fabulous!
This was a lovely read from a lovely woman who has led an absolutely fabulous life! It is rich in tales from India, where she was born, to Switzerland where she was a Bond Girl on `Her Majesty's Secret Service,' to Scotland, the Middle East, the Far East and points beyond. Miss Lumley lets no one define her but herself. She takes you on a tour of her house and each room reminds her of a journey in her life - whether that journey involved modeling, acting, traveling, humanitarian efforts, or just living.She acts as an interviewer of herself and thus can be self-depricating and revealing at the same time. She makes wry observations with a lovely turn of phrase: "If you really want to do something, you'll do it because you can't live with yourself not doing it." (p. 205) Or this one on age: "I don't know whether it's because I'm growing older and can see the sunset from the top of my hill, but I find things more and more fascinating nowadays." (p.257)Absolutely Fabulous, the show, is discussed on eight pages (pp. 158-166) with shorter references throughout but this is a comprehensive tale of a very full life, of which that very funny show was a part but does not comprise the whole. How fascinating that Miss Lumley's grandfather received a Tibetan Buddhist scripture from the 13th Dalai Lama which she plans to return to the 14th Dalai Lama on a trip she is packing for at the end of the book (p. 255).Thank you for sharing your Absolutely Fabulous life with us, Miss Lumley.May your adventures continue on and carry you forth.Looking forward to the next installment!

If you like Lumley, this is the book for you!
She was candid and reflective in her bio, sharing just enough of her life story to make it interesting without it coming across as a confessional or expose.She has a great grasp of details and some history in the book that really made me admire her even more as a person.

Quirky, soulful autobiography
Joanna Lumley chooses not to go down the usual biographical route. Instead of charting the progress of her career she instead stages a kind of free-falling description of her life as she tours the rooms of her London house and allows particular objects or photographs to stir memories.

She has a particular gift for storytelling and in describing her childhood. There is a kind of gentle humor throughout which is achieved more by choosing exactly the right word to describe something rather than by jokes. For instance, she imagines a stable of horses as looking "like an equine rugby team".

Less successful are her attempts at travelog, which seem to take the form of pages culled from her diary. However, overall her technique of darting from subject to subject is enticing as we gain bizarre glimpses into her everyday life (watching tv quizzes in the kitchen) and her philosophy.

This is the most unshowbizzy of memoirs and will find favor with people who enjoy reading biographies generally rather than fans of Absolutely Fabulous, which receives scant mention.

... Read more

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The "New Avengers" made Joanna Lumley a household name - immensely popular (as much with women as men), intelligent and glamorous, she has through her journalism proved herself to be a fine writer too. She has now decided to write her memoirs, which will be her first book, and promises to put her in a writing league with Bogarde and Mortimer. The story begins in Kashmir, where she was born, and then Malaya where she attended the army school in Kuala Lumpur. After boarding school in Sussex, she joined the Swinging Sixties, with a flat in Earls Court and a string of modelling jobs: this was the London of Biba, Nick's diner and the Marquee - of Mick Jagger and David Bailey. She became pregnant and, most unusually for those days, decided to bring up her child, a boy, on her own. Her career declined for a while, but then unexpectedly she landed the New Avengers job. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

If you know only Patsy, you don't know Joanna!
Granted, the immeasurably-talented Miss Lumley will be forever associated with her inimitable "Absolutely Fabulous" boozehound, Patsy Stone ("...39, international beauty and fashion guru") -- but as much as we may adore Pats, Lumley's best-known role belies the fascinating and articulate woman behind the character.

From her birth in India, through her modeling years in Swinging London, through an early small-screen career including virtually every British sitcom you've ever heard of, Lumley approaches both the adventure of world travel and the drudgery of trying to make it in the business with equal good humor, and a charming mix of eloquence and intimacy.

Do not, however, expect a racy show-biz expose; while honest and earnest, Lumley is downright coy about romantic involvements (and quite tight-lipped about the birth of her son).

And that, I am happy to report, is extremely refreshing.

I haven't read the newer biography on Lumley, and I'm not terribly anxious to just yet; after all, Stare Back and Smile is straight from the source -- and I rather enjoy keeping an image of Joanna Lumley (not the actor, but the woman) in my mind just as she intended the reader to envision her. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1931 Joanna Lumley's grandparents travelled to the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan to invest King Jigme Wangchuk as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire. They journeyed for three-and-a-half months through dense jungles and across mountain passes and uncharted plains, taking with them a film camera. In this book, their granddaughter records her thoughts and impressions of Bhutan as she follows in their footsteps, trekking across the country from west to east, on foot and on ponies. The book includes photographs from her trip, archive pictures from her grandparents' album, drawings by Lumley herself, and extracts from her own journal and her grandmother's diary. It is peppered with recipes, remedies, customs and, all through, a vein of personal family history and the author's own thoughts and observations. ... Read more

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A fascinating look at the life and career of Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Disappointing
This book leaves a lot to be desired. The authors are far too enamored and protective of the subject of the book to be subjective and so the book reads like a teen magazine interview.A good biography fleshs out the details but this book just reads like it was someone's school project to write about Joanna Lumley. ... Read more

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This affectionate and immensely readable biography charts the remarkable life of Joanna Lumley, who has been an endlessly fascinating figure for over four decades, since becoming a top model in the Swinging Sixties. Today, she is best known for her role as Patsy in "Absolutely Fabulous" and, most recently, her championing of the Gurkhas' cause, for which she is now regarded as a national treasure. An exotic cocktail of Home Counties and Hollywood, Joanna is revered as much for her tireless campaigning for animal rights and other causes, as for her repertory of characters on stage, screen and TV. Tim Ewbank and Stafford Hildred draw on their interviews with Joanna herself, her relatives, friends, and co-stars to produce this meticulously researched and revealing portrait of one of Britain's most likeable stars. ... Read more

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Drawing on both archive material and contributions from the public, this book looks at various aspects of wartime romance. It includes facsimiles of letters, postcards, telegrams, diaries, Valentine cards, honeymoon hotel bills, concert programs and press cuttings. The book explores the special nature of relationships between men and women in wartime: the way in which war brings some couples together and pulls others apart; how love survives while partners are separated by thousands of miles; and how people cope with the constant fear that loved ones might never return. The book also looks at romance as a symbol of hope; the particular poignancy of meetings and partings; the role of pin-ups as morale-boosters or reminders of home; the inevitable strains on relationships and the vital part played by correspondence; and the tragedy of affairs broken off and loved ones killed in battle. The book is published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London. ... Read more

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When Little Billy ignores his mother's warnings about the wild beasts in the Forest of Sin, he meets the Minpins, miniature people who own the forest and live in the trees. Little Billy vanquishes the worst monster of all and becomes a hero to the Minpins. ... Read more

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Eight and a half million viewerswatched the Are You Being Served? on BBC 1 on Saturday nights when it was rescreened in Spring/Summer 1998, in the silver jubilee year of the series first transmission.Sky Gold is continually re-running episodes and in the US it is one of the most popular cable TV programmes on the West Coast. Are You Being Served? is not only a TV classic it is also a cult. To celebrate the show we are publishing this 'official' celebration book contributed to and endorsed by the writers David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd who have made available original scripts and behind the scenes photographs as well as personal anecdotes. The book reviews the history of programme including how the original idea was developed. There are character and main actor profiles, and first hand interviews with John Inman, Molly Sugden, Trevor Banister, Arthur Brough, Frank Thornton, and Wendy Richard (now a key actress in Eastenders). This is followed by an episode-by-episode guide including a cast-list and original transmission date, features on the secretaries of young Mr Grace who became famous - and who could forget Joanna Lumley?- and quotes and memories from special guests. Finally there will be a special section on the feature film. ... Read more

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A beautiful, very moving, melancholic and elegiac novel set in the late 1960s in Melton, a small town in the West Country. The story revolves around a disparate group of people who come together there to establish an arts festival. There is Jack Curtis a self-made millionaire who has bought and refurbished the local stately home, Florence Plover, a garden designer in her sixties whom he has employed and her Anglo-Greek niece, Persephone. There are the Musgrove siblings, Thomas and Mary, whose family originally owned Melton Hall, who run a failing garden nursery nearby and there is Francis Brock, whose sister Celia, Thomas' wife, was tragically killed in a car crash some years previously. This is the story of their intertwining relationships and how they come to love, and not to love each other in different ways and why - a perfect book to curl up and read by the fireside on an autumn afternoon and as satisfying a read as Brief Encounter is a film. ... Read more