Compelling story of Clarissa Dickson Wright's amazing roller coaster life encompassing an extremely priviledged upbringing, child abuse, alcoholism, addiction, homelessness and finally success. Even though I disagree with her views on hunting, I still found it, a ripper read.
TASTY MORSELS
' It all had the elements of a farce: The anaesthetist was determined I must have a bad heart due to my size and was, I think, mortified when he had to admit that it was the healthiest heart he had seen in ten years;and the operation was
performed unsuccessfully as it transpired by an Indian doctor with very average English. I was in the Dickson Wright ward and we had a ridiculous debate because he couldn't grasp the fact that my name was the same as the ward's and thought I was
mocking him.Later, on the day of the operation, someone came and actually served a summons on me in my hospital bed for unpaid parking fines.'
'..for the five years that followed Clive's death were a mish mash of blackout and unmanageability. He died the day the war in the Falklands was declared in 1982. One day some time later I was standing in the rain under an umbrella and there was a parade going past and I asked a young man standing beside me what it was for.
Smiling, he said it was the Falklands parade. Mystified , I asked him whether something had happened in the Falklands, and not surprisingly he fled. After I was a few years sober someone gave me a book on the eighties: I don't even remember the Pope being shot because I spent the first six years of the decade with my head in a gin bottle.'
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