The Gift of a Radio: My Childhood and other Train Wrecks

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In this last episode, as Jenny's own results land in her inbox, she hears how at home DNA tests have brought family secrets - once thought long buried - out into the light. Between his mother's un-diagnosed psychological problems, and his step-father's untreated ones, life at home was dysfunctional at best. But with gun-wielding school masters and sub-standard living conditions, Quaker boarding school wasn't much better. The content is interesting, and it is very readable. However, I was surprised at the ragged quality of the narration, and the generally mediocre quality of the writing. I had assumed that an experienced journalist would be good at these things. There's one point (for example) where he is relating the story of how he entered a writing competition at school. It then jumps to prize ceremony and the audience reaction, without actually telling us that he won! It's surprising that the editor didn't spot this. He may have one of the bestknown voices in Britain as the longest-serving presenter of Radio 4's Today programme, but it turns out he is a wonderful writer, too. This is very, very good. It is not only a vivid portrait of Justin Webb's young life but, deftly, of those times as well. He has a light touch but writes with great sensitivity, insight, and wit. It is touchingly self-revelatory but never mawkish. The absurd snobberies of the class into which he was born and reared are brilliantly illuminated. The portrait of his mother is painful and touching, tender and anguished. He is never self-pitying or self-regarding but there is much raw pain as well as candour in what he writes. A very fine memoir indeed. Jonathan Dimbleby

Moving and frank ... A story of a childhood defined by loneliness, the absence of a father and the grim experience of a Quaker boarding school. It is also one of the most perceptive accounts of Britain in the 1970s.'- Misha Glenny Justin is a great broadcaster because he sounds like a real human being. This hugely entertaining book helps explain why'. John Humphrys Webb was aware growing up that he didn’t have a male role model he could look up to, turning instead to watching the Bath rugby team to try to discover what it was to be a man. Webb has three children of his own but doesn’t tell us about his relationship with them. Does he think he’s a good father himself? Perhaps he feels unable to judge and doesn’t like to presume. “Plenty of dry humour” When I saw this book in Waterstones, I thought the blurb looked interesting - apparently he did not have a conventionally privileged or happy childhood. There are no family photos in the book, the only one is on the front cover, a shot of Webb as a young boy looking slightly confused. He explains in the book that this expression is because he wasn’t used to having his photo taken and was wondering why it was happening.

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Justin Webb is a survivor and it's incredible how he went on to thrive in journalism and broadcasting.

He and I are about the same age, and I can identify with some of his experiences including, uncannily, a trip he made to Athens around the same time as me in the early eighties. He went with the Magic Bus company, I went with a similar operator but Greek – Theo Consolas. The fare was dirt cheap, you travelled more or less non stop with just a few minutes’ stop at emerging service stations, travelling across Europe including behind the Iron curtain into what was then Yugoslavia, arriving in Athens about four days later. Justin Webb’s memory of the drivers is something I share which has never left me and often relate to others. There were two coach drivers. When they changed shifts they didn’t stop the bus. As Justin Webb masterfully describes, “Grizzled driver would get the coach into fourth gear and lurch suddenly out of his seat while keeping one hand on the wheel. The coach was coasting along with no ability to brake. Fat Man would ease himself into the seat and grab the wheel, slightly correcting a course that was taking us into the middle of the road....the drivers did not sleep and did not eat.” I can vouch for every word because that’s exactly what happened on Theo Consolas’ coach. What didn’t happen to my coach is the incident Justin Webb goes on to describe and which I won’t reveal here, as it’s for you to discover if you read his book. All I will say is Across six episodes, Jenny Kleeman meets the men and women whose lives changed forever after they opened a box that contained a DNA test. Exposing scandals, upending identities, solving mysteries and delivering life-changing news - Jenny investigates what happens when genealogy, technology and identity collide.So, when I heard he’d written an autobiography I thought it would be interesting to find out more about him. And it was. Moving and frank ... A story of a childhood defined by loneliness, the absence of a father and the grim experience of a Quaker boarding school. It is also one of the most perceptive accounts of Britain in the 1970s.' Misha Glenny Candid, unsparing and darkly funny, Justin Webb's memoir is as much a portrait of a troubled era as it is the story of a dysfunctional childhood, shaping the urbane and successful radio presenter we know and love now. She also turned to the Quakers and decided to send her son to Sidcot School, a boarding school run by them about 40 minutes from the Webb family home. The conditions were harsh (no hot water) and Webb says several times that the staff didn’t much care about actually educating their pupils. For instance, he was allowed to give up science. Moving, darkly hilarious ... In his mother, Gloria Crocombe, Webb records a great tragicomic character. Melanie Reid, The Times

Justin is a great broadcaster because he sounds like a real human being. This hugely entertaining book helps explain why. John Humphrys

Justin Webb's memoir is unique: for its style, acute observation, and the combination of being unflinching and written with love. Mishal Husain

It’s clearly something that haunts him. The last paragraph in his book begins, “Peter Woods and I never met.” Strangely, despite Webb following in Woods’ journalistic footsteps at the BBC, he never sought out his father and never met him. Later in the chapter, he tells how the teachers and governors knew about the physical beatings going on, “but didn’t care.....there was no authority that could protect younger or vulnerable boys.” This is not the first account of the regime in private school and it won’t be the last. I’m pleased to read his view now about private education, which is identical to my own –“to send a child to live away from home at the age of eleven may be forgivable in some circumstances, but not in most.”

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Things got no better when he went to Sidcot, a private Quaker boarding school, which sounds even more grim than his home life. Bullying and violence were rife with disinterested teachers unconcerned about the violence or indeed imparting knowledge. Justin Webb continued to conceal all feelings and ended up growing his hair, drinking a lot, and listening to the likes of Free and Led Zep. Towards the end of his time there he was thrown a lifeline and got himself together.