Exceeding my Brief by Barbara Hosking
£9.99
Memoirs of a Disobedient Civil Servant
Paperback, 384 pages
12 March 2019
From the tragic massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games to signing the Treaty of Rome when Britain entered the Common Market, Barbara Hosking was there.
This is the story of a Cornish scholarship girl with no contacts who ended up in the corridors of power serving two British Prime Ministers. It is also the very personal story of her struggle with her sexuality as a young woman in the 1950s, a time when being gay could mean social ostracism.
Between working on a copper mine in the African bush, serving as a press officer to Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, and pioneering British breakfast television, hers is a tale of breadth and bravery. At the age of ninety-two, Barbara Hosking reflects on her life and gives a compelling account of the innermost workings of politics and the media amid the turbulence of twentieth-century Britain.