As a memoir of growing up in the West of Scotland amidst poverty, abuse, alcoholism and bullying, while realising from a young age that he was gay, this was riveting.

We are incredibly excited to be working once again with some of the best creative talent in Scotland and bringing both of these fantastic books to the screen. Maggie Thatcher emerges from the rubble, dusty but defiant and somehow in the living room of 8-year-old Damian Barr in Newarthill. In 2019, Damian brought books back to television with the BBC’s Big Scottish Book Club, now in its fifth series. It won Sunday Times Memoir of the Year: "Full to the brim with poignancy, humour, brutality and energetic and sometimes shimmering prose, the book confounds one's assumptions about those years and drenches the whole era in an emotionally charged comic grandeur. All information was correct to the best of our knowledge from details supplied to us but may be subject to change or inaccuracies.I didn’t realise how much shame I still carried with me about not having a school uniform that fitted, or being hungry, or being tall, speccy or gay or any of the other things I got a hard time for. As mentioned, this book is set in a small village; one already struggling with the loss of the nearby coal industry and now in dire straits at the imminent loss of the steel industry. Dog owners making an environmental New Year Resolution have boosted the ranks of the “PAWS ON PLASTIC’ campaign to 25,000. Obviously, any memoir /autobiography set in the 80s and 90s is going to be compelling for those of us who were also young In those decades.

Like everybody she says she hates Maggie but I think they would get on, they’re both used to getting what they want. She (and Damian) go on to live with a succession of unpleasant men, whilst Damian seeks solace in books and friendships (though the latter also prove difficult at times as he struggles to fit into the heteronormic, violent culture around him). Damian’s experiences skip from the sad to the joyful, the funny, the silly, the universality of being a kid. Last year, as part of a wider strategy announcement, STV confirmed ambitious plans to grow STV Productions into a world-class production company. Barr was an intelligent, creative young man who early on knew that he was gay and, not just for that reason, often felt that there was no place for him: neither in working-class Scotland, where his father was a steelworker and his brain-damaged mother flitted from one violent boyfriend to another; nor in Maggie Thatcher’s 1980s Britain at large, in which money was the reward for achievement and the individual was responsible for his own moral standing and worldly advancement (even if his high school team did make it to the finals of the BT-sponsored Young Consumer of the Year quiz, held that year in Brighton, where he would one day live with his boyfriend).Although Margaret Thatchers accomplishments are mostly reflected in negative light, the end comparison which Barr makes is that ' "You also saved my life … You were different, like me, and you had to fight to be yourself. The recent gains in Malta, India, Cuba dwarfed by the continuing prejudices - and unimaginable violence - people hold against the LGBTQI+ community. Without a shred of self pity, Damian Barr tells the story of his appalling childhood in a Housing estate near Glasgow and how it (and Maggie Thatcher) shaped his life. The irrational guilt which Damien spent his childhood drowning in breaks your heart and the toxic environment surrounding his upbringing. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

The partnership will bring to life a unique Food Foraging Experience, set to be developed and piloted in the coming months. I devoured this memoir on a flight (and then, in a happy haze, left my iPad in the seat-pocket, argh). A memoir about growing up in working class Scotland in the 1980s, this book reminded me of Kerry Hudson's work, but is of course its own story too. Damian Barr gives a warm but grueling account of what it meant to grow up gay in the decaying industrial cities of the north during the rule of Margaret Thatcher. Damian, his sister, and his Catholic mother move in with her sinister new boyfriend, while his Protestant dad shacks up with the glamorous "Mary the Canary.

The production will premiere at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre in May before touring to Inverness, Perth, Cumbernauld, Dundee and Edinburgh. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. But darkness threatens as Maggie takes hold: she snatches school milk, smashes the unions and makes greed good.