Going on this journey with Damian has been as moving, hilarious and uplifting as I hope and believe the play will be when it gets in front of audiences next Spring. A poignant and painfully funny memoir about growing up gay in Thatcher’s Britain, it won Sunday Times Memoir of the Year, and was BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.

Using long-forgotten quotes from the Iron Lady herself to start each chapter, he vividly brings to life the characters that inhabited his childhood. No time for turning, so buckle up for a surreal yet so-real rollercoaster ride through Damian’s painful past rediscovering who he really is.

I see this book as a balanced look at what Maggie did for (and took away) from the people of Britain. A Radio 4 Book of the Week, the Sunday Times named it Memoir of the Year and it won various lovely awards. Damian's childhood and teenage years are set against a Scotland having its industry decimated by Thatcher, and this, plus the depictions of conflict between Protestants and Catholics, provide an interesting and valuable piece of social history. Musical sensation Jess Folley will play Ali in Burlesque the Musical, the first ever stage adaptation of Steven Antin's crowd-pleasing movie Burlesque, when it comes to Glasgow! It feels like quite a provocative thing to do in Scotland, but it's not going to be fandom by any means.

If you’d like a signed copy, please get in touch via my Contact page and I’ll send you a signed bookplate. Damien's childhood is an amalgamation of abuse, struggle, love, friendship, survival and ultimately triumphant, coming out in a straight world. If life was difficult, you came through, and if you know you shouldn’t agree with her, but feel just something in the way of sympathy, that’s okay. Further still, there remains alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse and addiction and depression issues that far outweigh the local area. Like everybody she says she hates Maggie but I think they would get on, they’re both used to getting what they want.The Irish Times, says: 'A story so powerful it’s a useful reminder of how fiction can illuminate the indignities visited upon those the world has mistreated then forgotten.

Is it just another "self made man fallacy" memoir, where he neglects or blots out the huge slices of luck he had (including avoiding what could have been death on at least two occasions) to get where he is now? This is a brave book for tackling the story of thousands of people in Scotland during Thatcher, because this is their story too. A childhood growing up in 1980's Scotland (Not Britain) where Maggie Thatcher's `reign' is about to bring the demise of the town of Motherwell. From the furnaces of the Ravenscraig Steelworks to the sanctuary of Carfin Grotto, there’s pain and joy, coming of age and coming out. TEACHERS who are playing a vital role in creating ‘Generation Swim’ are being celebrated across the country as part of a Scotland-wide recruitment drive.The National Theatre of Scotland will be collaborating with film and video students from New College Lanarkshire to create a short documentary about the making of the production. In any case, I'm glad I did work backwards to discover where he started out: his memoir, though not overly long, is packed with incident and insight, and is both hilariously and sometimes shockingly unfiltered. Especially in a small town of hardened steel workers, alcoholism and depression deepened further by poverty and fear. You Will Be Safe Here' is my first novel - a Guardian, Observer and NPR pick for 2019 and Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. Barr's depiction is so pungent, so earth-shattering it's a universal story of alienation - one for anyone who's ever felt desperate to escape.