Search results for ""Author Barbara Hosking""

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. It is also the very personal story of her struggle with her sexuality as a bewildered teenager, and as a young woman in the 1950s, a time when being gay could mean social ostracism. Born during the General Strike in 1926, Barbara Hosking worked her way through London's typing pools in the 1950s to executive posts in the Labour Party, then to No. 10 as a press officer to Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. Between working on a copper mine in the African bush, pioneering British breakfast television and negotiating the complexities of government, hers has been a life of breadth and bravery. This is Barbara Hosking's unheard-of account of the innermost workings of politics and the media amid the turbulence of twentieth-century Britain.

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From the Munich Olympic Games when the athletes were murdered by terrorists, to the initialling of the Treaty of Rome when Britain entered the Common Market, Barbara Hosking was there. This is the story of a simple Cornish girl with no contacts or education, who ended up in the corridors of power. It is also a very personal story of her struggle with her sexuality as a bewildered teenager, to her being out and proud when it was terminally unfashionable to be so! Born during the General Strike in 1926 Barbara Hosking swam her way through London typing pools in the 1950s, to executive posts in the Labour Party, then to No. 10 as press officer to Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. Hers is a journey from Wardour Street through politics, to international law reform, then onto the Board of ITV. It is also the story of a Cornish childhood where life in the diary sometimes included going with her father to collect churns of milk from farms around Land’s End, listening to tales of mermaids and giants, lifeboats and pasties. There are descriptions of politicians in the days when they were big – Nye Bevan, Barbara Castle, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath who came to her 75th birthday at the Reform Club. There is also a 3-year detour when she worked on a copper mine in the African bush near Lake Tanganyika and discovered she was good with a gun. Later there are reminders of the great days of the ITV companies. The eggcups of Breakfast TV and Yorkshire TV’s Darling Buds of May. It is a page-turner of a long life but, as Barbara says, `I had 91 years of raw material to work on.’

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