Maggie And me & Greenapple Street Blues: Best Dressed Bully; Thunder And Lightning; Hockey Stuck; Crime Wave in Room 7; the Best Tree You Can be; ... Substitute Mother; the More Things Change

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Watching a woman in her forties go from disgraced Catholic dropout to all black and grey wearing feminist fag hag with three degrees. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms - but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation. Destroying the livelihood of the people surrounding Damian, reducing benefits of the poor and blaming them for being poor, clause 28 etc and on the other side inspiring a young boy to work hard and become successful.

Maggie Thatcher emerges from the rubble, dusty but defiant and somehow in the living room of 8-year-old Damian Barr in Newarthill. That this book exists is of course some testament that he did, but the vision of him as MC at that cool Literary Salon confirms it. His childhood, evoked with such cheek-biting tenderness, now seems more real and more Technicolor than my own.They live their childhood years hidden, silenced, fearful of rejection, with acceptance during adolescence as delicate as rice paper and a heavy hand. This helped it to feel less retrospective and more in-the-moment which added a story-like quality to this autobiographical book. The surprisingly funny and positive story of growing up gay in a working-class town in Thatcher's Britain. Like everybody she says she hates Maggie but I think they would get on, they’re both used to getting what they want.

It was wonderful how the author engaged readers by revealing heartbreaking accounts, balanced with humour and wit.A personal recollection, part affectionate, part exasperated, from a man who reported on Margaret Thatcher's leadership from day one, Channel 4's Jon Snow. 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.

Despite the harshness of your hometown and the misery and inner confusion, the hope and the beauty shines through. Barr tells his engaging, sad-funny story of a camp, bright lad in dire circumstances in Thatcher-era Motherwell in such a beguilingly confiding, arm-linking style, that I felt I'd made a new best friend only to lose them to a world of glittering opportunities.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! 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. 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. I've also co-written two plays for Radio 4 and written a short after play for their Fact to Fiction slot. I devoured this memoir on a flight (and then, in a happy haze, left my iPad in the seat-pocket, argh).

I am a huge fan of Damian Barr's The Literary Salon podcast (link below) and have been looking forward to this book for ages. The partnership will bring to life a unique Food Foraging Experience, set to be developed and piloted in the coming months. 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.Although Margaret Thatchers accomplishments are mostly reflected in negative light, the end comparison which Barr makes is that ' "You also saved my life … You were different, like me, and you had to fight to be yourself. And thanks, Mum, for taking us to Pride as a family and me finding out which teachers from my church school were gay, seeing one in his favourite dark stonewashed jeans and Doc Martins but up top a leather harness over his pasty white chest.