Like Father, Like Son

'a quietly impressive book, which does something most celebrity autobiographies shy away from: it seeks the truth and, more often than not, finds it.' - THE MAIL

A look at the life and times of the man Sir Michael most looked up to.

It started in the shadow of the pithead in a South Yorkshire mining village and ended up in tears before an audience of millions. Michael Parkinson's relationship with his late father John William was, and remains, a family love story overflowing with tenderness and tall tales of sporting valour, usually involving Yorkshire cricket or Barnsley FC.

However, it was the overwhelming grief which poured out of Michael when Piers Morgan pressed him about John William in a television interview - four decades after the death of the father he encapsulated as 'Yorkshireman, miner, humorist and fast bowler' - that convinced one of the outstanding broadcasters and journalists of our time to delve deeper into the dynamics of their lives together.

Co-written with his son Mike, this affectionate and revealing memoir explores the influences which shaped John William, Michael and succeeding generations of Parkinsons. The journey leads them from the depths of a Yorkshire coal mine, via the chapel, pub and picture-house, to a spot behind the bowler's arm at Lord's and the sands at Scarborough.

While Like Father, Like Son conveys a powerful sense of time and place, it is wit, insight and, above all, enduring love which shine through its pages.,
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Born in Yorkshire, Michael Parkinson left school at sixteen with the ambition to play cricket for Yorkshire and England and to write about cricket for the Manchester Guardian. Although he didn't manage to fulfil the first half of his ambition, he has since become one of the most successful journalists of his generation. He wrote a sports column for The Sunday Times for fifteen years and has also written for the Telegraph. He is a legendary TV and radio presenter - his long-running chat show Parkinson was hugely popular for many years.

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