Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A funny and moving trip through memories, musings and the many delights on the Number 12 route
Between the Stops
What you need to know before your trail
From London facts including where to find the blue plaque for Una Marson, ‘The first black woman programme maker at the BBC’, to discovering the best Spanish coffee under Southwark’s railway arches; from a brief history of lady gangsters at Elephant and Castle to memories of climbing Mount Sinai and, at the request of a fellow traveller, reading aloud the Ten Commandments; from the story behind Pissarro’s painting of Dulwich Station to performing in Footlights with Emma Thompson; from painful memoires of being sent to Coventry while at a British boarding school to thinking about how Wombells Travelling Circus of 1864 haunts Peckham Rye;from anecdotes about meeting Prince Charles, Monica Lewinsky and Grayson Perry to Bake-Off antics; from stories of a real and lasting friendship with John McCarthy to the importance of family and the daunting navigation of the Zambezi River in her father’s canoe, this Sandi Toksvig-style memoir is, as one would expect and hope, packed full of surprises.
Locations
Reset- London - Elephant and Castle/Southwark
- T: Elephant and Castle tube station/Tabernacle
- U: Southwark - Imperial War museum
Travel Guide
Discover London and the number 12 bus route BookTrail style with Sandy Toksvig
This is perhaps one of the most interesting stories set on a bus ever. Sandi takes the route, the streets off it and what she remembers from living in London as a jobbing comedian/presenter as she looks out of the window as the bus makes it way from Dulwich through Camberwell and across Westminster bridge into the bustling Oxford Street.
The stories along the way are a mixture of Sandi’s familiar and so so funny humour and way of seeing life, her experience of inequality as a gay woman, family struggles, fresh starts and theatrical asides.
Wait until you read the story about the man on the tube who wants to show her something! Or when she offers to open someone’s sandwich for them as they’re having trouble opening the pack!
Some very sad moments too such as the abuse she got after the father of her children’s identity came out, people not accepting their marriage and the fight for working at the BBC.
You can hear Sandi narrate this as you read. What a wonderful bus companion to have” History, humour and Toksvig magic all for the price of a book (and a bus ticket – you HAVE to take this bus journey before, during and after reading this!)
Booktrailer Review
Hands down, the funnist, most imaginative and insightful biography I’ve ever read. Toksvig tidbits and tales set on a bus!
TheBookTrail’s full bookreview of Between the Stops, Sandi Toksvig
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Between the Stops
Destination : London Author/Guide: Sandi Toksvig Departure Time: 2000s
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