Stop the Clocks

Joan Bakewell has led a varied, sometimes breathless life: she has been a teacher, copywriter, studio manager, broadcaster, journalist, the government's Voice of Older People and chair of the theatre company Shared Experience. She has written four radio plays, two novels and an autobiography ­- The Centre of The Bed. Now in her 80s, she is still broadcasting. Though it may look as though she is now part of the establishment - a Dame, President of Birkbeck College, a Member of the House of Lords as Baroness Bakewell of Stockport - she's anything but and remains outspoken and courageous. In Stop the Clocks, she muses on all she has lived through, how the world has changed and considers the things and values she will be leaving behind.

Stop the Clocks is a book of musings, a look back at what she was given by her family, at the times in which she grew up - ranging from the minutiae of life such as the knowledge of how to darn and how to make a bed properly with hospital corners, to the bigger lessons of politics, of lovers, of betrayal. She talks of the present, of her family, of friends and literature - and talks too of what she will leave behind. This is a thoughtful, moving and spirited book as only could be expected from this extraordinary woman.

“[Joan Bakewell's] new book is a joy”

A wry analysis of the world she will leave - Observer

Heartfelt and fiendishly smart - Sunday Telegraph

Companionable and insightful . . . by turns entertaining, frank and - when dealing with death and loss - unflinching. It is, then, true to the spirit of a most accomplished woman, who has always had the knack of making whatever she does look easy. When it comes to facing down old age with such style and honesty, that is perhaps the most impressive achievement of all - Herald

She writes as sensitively as George Orwell . . . Bakewell is an advertisement for active survival - New Statesman

Joan Bakewell has had a fifty year career in broadcasting and is still at it. Born in Stockport, graduated in Cambridge, she has published an autobiography, The Centre of the Bed, and two novels: All the Nice Girls and She's Leaving Home. She has two children, six grandchildren, and sits in the House of Lords as a Labour Peer. She lives in North London.

Joan Bakewell has led a varied, sometimes breathless life: she has been a teacher, copywriter, studio manager, broadcaster, journalist, the government's Voice of Older People and chair of the theatre company Shared Experience. She has written four radio plays, two novels and an autobiography

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