Friends and Enemies - A Memoir

This is undoubtedly the autobiography of the decade. Barbara Amiel''s searing - and sometimes brutal - honesty, both about herself and others, leaves the reader staggered. The fact that she has for decades been the most sexually attractive female public intellectual on either side of the Atlantic, and certainly knew it, got her into extraordinary scrapes which she describes with a political incorrectness that is as refreshing as it will be highly controversial. How one person could have lived so many starkly different lives - bikini model, gangster''s moll, first female editor, TV provocateur, multi-married sexual adventuress, proud Zionist, poet''s muse, Cold War warrior, titled society hostess, assiduous prison visitor, and more - is truly extraordinary. There is not a hint of self-pity despite endless opportunities for it - including a rape, an abortion, depression, mental disturbance and three divorces - but instead we get many abandoned, laugh-out-loud scenes and witticisms that will live with the reader for a long time. No-one expected a discreet memoir from Barbara Amiel, but few could possibly have imagined that it would be quite this powerfully, dangerously, profoundly self-revelatory. We learn that a medical condition gave her an excess of testosterone; that explains a lot about her life, and a lot about this book>

Product details

• Authors: Barbara Amiel, Amiel Barbara
• Publisher: Constable
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.10.2020
• EAN: 9781472134219
• ISBN: 978-1-4721-3421-9
• No. of pages: 608
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 238 mm x 52 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Rich & Famous, Memoirs, Autobiography: business & industry, Autobiography: historical, political & military, Autobiography: arts & entertainment, Autobiography: historical, political and military, Autobiography: arts and entertainment