A Radio 4 Book of the Week, the Sunday Times named it Memoir of the Year and it won various lovely awards. Further still, there remains alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse and addiction and depression issues that far outweigh the local area.

The Lord of the Rings and Green Book actor will discuss his varied life and career both on screen and behind the camera ahead of the UK premiere of his new Western The Dead Don't Hurt.I understand that, especially when the world feels more divided, fractured and dark than it has for a long time. He discovers that stories can save your life and - in spite of violence, strikes, AIDS and Clause 28 - manages to fall in love dancing to Madonna in Glasgow's only gay club. As others have mentioned, I don’t think the Thatcher framing really works, and the quotes at the start of each chapter feel forced. He's the award-winning playwright behind the hit shows Love Song to Lavender Menace , Wilf and Ode To Joy. Damian’s account of survival and the quest for community, joy and voice resonates for any of us who know what it is to negotiate boundaries of sexuality and class.

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? When we began chatting about what it would look like on stage, I thought it would be fun to bring Maggie Thatcher and drag her into the story, rather than her just be present at the beginning of each chapter as she is in the memoir. This is no ordinary crime novel – along with its brilliantly plotted mystery, and wonderful characters, Kirstin’s book asks some brave and provocative questions about the world we live in.I’ll never forget the hard faced bouncers and the sticky carpets, the notoriously disgusting pints of Tennants and the voguing. Powered by men who need to read the study that those who identify as strictly heterosexual and against gays show the largest reaction with their penises when shown erotic gay images. This memoir takes us through his life growing up in a Scottish housing scheme in the midst of Thatcherism, in a broken home and trying to be everything but himself. I was particularly drawn in by his style, which is beautiful without being showy and serves to make the story he's telling so immediate that you feel you could reach through the page and put your hand on him.

Well, I can thank my mother, Mary Knight, massively for shaping our family view on sexuality and gender norms. Barr cleverly frames the book with quotations by Margaret Thatcher, who constantly hums in the background of this book, interjecting a sense of time and place throughout. Devastating and formally ingenious, it traces the paths by which historical grief engenders present violence . The partnership will bring to life a unique Food Foraging Experience, set to be developed and piloted in the coming months.

IRN-BRU has unveiled a set of photographs created by AI showing different ways Robert Burns might be marking his national day if he were around in 2024! Because of this, the reader can have no trouble indulging in this lovely piece of writing, supporting its hero all the way, taking the extreme brutality of those early days with a grave nod, and subsequently grinning wildly at the knowledge that Barr is writing it from the life he always wanted. 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. He said: “When the book came out, I wrote it from a place of thinking about the long arc of justice and things getting better. His other plays include Wilf (Traverse Theatre) and Love Song to Lavender Menace (Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, Summerhall, SoHo Playhouse, New York).