No Room for Secrets

No Room for Secrets by Joanna Lumley. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780718146825.

The reader and I are only interested in the truth. Recklessly generously illustrated. This is the book Ive been secretly longing to write. There is so much in my overstuffed life that Ive never talked about publicly before. All the things I love and dread are here: objects, photographs, people, letters, ideas, regrets, memories, journeys, being a model in the sixties, a daughter of the regiment, a friend of Dirk Bogarde; things I believe in, people Ive met and cant forget; slumming it, lording it, failure and survival. I wanted to write about eyeliner as well as sleeping under shrunken heads in a longhouse; being an honorary New Yorker, death (and why I think about it daily) and how to get thinner fast. To give it structure I have devised a framework which is in fact, My House. I shall show the reader into every room, from front door to attic window, walking through the (colossally) sustained metaphor of my life, answering questions (which I have cunningly put) about all the stuff in the place; my things: me. Why are you photographed with the Dalai Lama? Is this the teddy bear you had on your bed at school? Did you draw this picture of your son? Why did you make these pathetic curtains? Who are you? Do you lie to the press?