Miriam Margolyes

Sometime around 2012 we were lucky enough to catch Miriam Margolyes performing Dickens' Women at Her Majesty's Theatre in Ballarat. A one person show, with pianist, written by Margolyes and Sonia Fraser, she commanded the stage, effortlessly shifting through 23 different characters, based on or inspired by 21 women and 2 men in Dickens' novels. An admirer of Dickens work, at no stage did the performance shirk from the less savoury aspects of his life, his obsession with youthful beauty, his show more "odd" relationships with sister-in-law, and, in Margolyes' own words from an interview in The Lumiere Reader in 2007 (accessible via the waybackmachine: https://web.archive.org/web/20080423234540/http://www.lumiere.net.nz/reader/item...:

"The characters are based on real women in Dickens’ life and where they parallel with his fictional characters. I love the contrast between the goodness of the prose and the badness of the man. His daughter once said ‘he was a very wicked man’ and no-one seems to know that but they will after they see my show."

That ability to see contrast, and a willingness to forgive some transgressions and refuse to accept others, is very much the Margolyes way. As is, one suspects, a somewhat cheeky attitude towards shocking others, and an unrelenting desire to tell the unvarnished, uncensored truth. About everything.

I had the great, unmitigated joy of listening to Margolyes read the story of her life, and blessed, as she is, with the elocution and vowels of much work (instigated by her mother), her voice is captivating, as is her ability to switch between accents at the drop of page. Her background as a voice actress and in voiceover work (including a stint in soft-porn), to say nothing of the more well-known (and very different from that) roles in Harry Potter or Fly in the movie Babe, provides her with all the tools required to do an admirable, and very engaging audio version of her own autobiography. Her life provides her with much fodder for the story itself.

It might be fairest to potential readers of this autobiography to point out a few things - if you come to this as a fan of Fly, or Professor Pomona Sprout, knowing little else about Margolyes, and you are likely to be offended by explicit sexual content (of the relieving of men kind somewhat surprisingly for an avowed lesbian like the author), then might be best to avoid. If you're also not a fan of somebody who calls a spade an f***ing shovel, you may be best to skip by. Margolyes is not one to toy with people's "sensibilities". She's not a fan of prudes, and she's not a fan of beating about the bush. One finds it very hard to imagine that back in the days of the Cambridge Footlights, that a particular set of very badly behaved men could not have known of their transgressions, Margolyes is not one to muck about if you've pissed her off.

I think that's what I loved most about this entire audio book. Here is a woman who can be bad-tempered, makes mistakes, swears fluently and enthusiastically (a woman after my own heart) and is totally and utterly unapologetic about it. She's also not in denial about who or what or how she's lived her life, and there is much in this book that goes to the heart of mistakes made, people transgressed against, and those who have transgressed against her. She doesn't pull any punches about just about everything.

And it is because of all of the above that I loved every sweary, pointed, ridiculous, contradictory, unapologetic minute of it - including the soldier up a tree. I mean if you can't live your life as you bloody well want to when you're Miriam Margolyes, what hope is there for the rest of us. All power to her, her walking frame, her beautiful eyes, her beloved Heather and her career going forward.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/much-true-miriam-margolyes show less

This book isn't an autobiography but rather a number of anecdotes from her long and varied life. Chapters range from 'Getting to Know You' to 'How to Stay Married' and 'Never Steal Thunder' which means that the book reads like a series of short stories. As with every collection of short stories that I've ever read I feel that some of them work whereas others don't but I suspect that other readers are likely to enjoy differing ones to me.

This book was bought for me as a present and as such show more isn't something that I would normally read. I'm not really interested in the cult of 'celebrity', but on the whole I enjoyed reading about this extraordinary and forthright lady, and I'd quite happily have her come sit beside me on a park bench for a natter. show less

Miriam Margolyes’s This Much is True is a wonder - filled with joy, passion, opinion, courage and truth. I devoured it. Now it’s finished, I’m bereft!
Her sheer humanity shines through every hilarious anecdote, every heartfelt tribute and even the (far fewer) denunciations. Her manifest rudery is somehow never dirty or offensive, at least not to me. I think this feat is achieved by allowing us to glimpse, every now and again, the unexpected, shy prude lurking in the wings. Though show more she’s never allowed on stage. Not on your life! What prude ever ‘broke the ice’, reached out, made connections? That’s what Miriam’s been doing her whole life long. Brava!
It’s not all laugh out loud (though much of it is). After visiting Auschwitz, for instance, she writes: ‘It left me feeling as if I never wanted to laugh again’. A sentence like that sure wipes the smile off a face.
Her passionate espousal of causes from the fate of the Palestinians and the promotion of the Jewish race (yes, both feel equally important to her), to the detestation of bad, corrupt or incompetent governance, is blazingly and courageously expressed.
Reading the book has enriched and emboldened me. show less

Received as a birthday gift, or I don't think I would have chosen Miriam! She is awesome, though - very, very blunt and explicit about everything from her body and sexuality to politics and acting. Like an old woman without a conversation filter, except she's always been like that. My main discovery is that she was the voice of the Cadbury's Caramel bunny, though!