Professor Sprout and Lady White Adder are just a couple of the well-known characters that national treasure and award-winning entertainer Miriam Margolyes created.

She has made the decision to share her remarkable life story at the age of 80. And compared to any role she has played, it is much richer and stranger.

Learn about her birth in an air raid, how she became the unruliest student in the history of Oxford High School, how Monty Python and the Goodies sent her to Coventry, how she swore on University Challenge, becoming the first woman to do so on television, how she ended up posing in a bikini for Augustus John at the age of 17, and more. This book contains many incredible stories, including receiving the best (male) kiss she has ever received and getting reprimanded by the Queen. She is as warm and honest, full of life and surprises, and as portrayed by actors like Scorsese, Streisand, Leonardo di Caprio, and Isaiah Berlin in the film This Much is True.