Self-Portrait with Parents
How adolescence galvanised me for a single-breasted adulthood
Patricia Tyerman
Here is a new kind of autobiography, combining original research with a personal understanding of the author's upbringing and its consequences.
- ISBN 9781800420496
- Published Apr 2021
- 210 x 148mm (252 pages)
Breast cancer shocked her into asking how she would cope. What resources of body and mind had she inherited from her parents?
Self-Portrait with Parents combines original research with a personal understanding of Tyerman’s upbringing and its consequences. Looking back at her adolescence and exploring the largely unknown lives of her parents has helped her not only to recover from recurrent breast cancer but also to resist the powerfully negative reactions still common today.
Tyerman’s father, Donald, Oxford scholar from the impoverished north-east, wartime Fleet Street hero and BBC broadcaster, deputy editor of The Times and editor of the Economist, endured high responsibility without real power. Her mother, Margaret Gray, gave up several careers to look after five children and a husband disabled by childhood polio. Tyerman grew up with a father who couldn’t walk. Yet his passion was athletics. Her parents were indifferent to gender distinctions while the outside world valued Fifties femininity. This was hard for Tyerman then but now liberates her to resist assumptions about a loss of womanhood and sexuality.
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After a degree in Modern History at Oxford University, Patricia Tyerman took a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at the University of London (1970). While teaching in special schools and a child guidance clinic for the Inner London Education Authority, she achieved a First in Psychology and Philosophy from Birkbeck College, University of London (1977). She was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the Open University (1979–99) and she was a senior research fellow at Canterbury Christchurch University (1999–2004).
At the Open University Tyerman co-authored and co-edited six books for a wide readership. Other books include Inclusion in the City and Education in Britain and China, which were both published by Routledge in 2003. This is her first memoir, written in her maiden name.
Since 2004, Tyerman has written and performed stories for the Spark network at the Canal Café Theatre, London. She has completed creative writing courses run by City University and the Arvon Foundation and belonged to the West9Writers’ Group convened by Susan Elderkin, a Granta Best of Young British Novelists (Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains, 2000, The Novel Cure, 2014).
Tyerman belongs to a weekly writers’ group and she divides her time between writing, playing the French Bassoon, seeing her grandsons and exploring London on foot and by bike.
"At once a vivid slice of social history, a bittersweet evocation of parent-child relations, and an unflinching portrait of living with cancer, Patricia Tyerman’s powerful but subtle testimony will take a deservedly high place in this golden age of memoir writing." – David Kynaston
"I absolutely love it. I laughed, wept and was intrigued by the internecine struggles of Tyerman’s Dad with the journalist subaristos and raged that so little of anything has changed." – PW, teacher
"I’ve read and really enjoyed Tyerman’s book.I think she’s done her parents proud through her research and reflection on their lives. I learned a lot about journalism that I didn’t know as well as being reminded of the atmosphere of her (and my) growing up at a time of such great social change. It’s very readable and nicely produced too." - HH, school governor
"It’s a triumph and absolutely riveting. I have hardly put it down since it arrived and have just completed it in the small hours with the enchanting poem. Coming from a family of five myself I can relate to the fights and arguments and people storming out. It’s so good that Tyerman has managed to show what a power in the land her father was in his heyday but then treated so shoddily. Her gentle mother carried a heavy load. Not fulfilling one’s potential is often the price of motherhood and her mother had to do so much more to keep the show on the road." - AS, magistrate
"It’s a beautiful book. Tyerman’s writing is elegant, musical and evocative…. I must admit I cried a few times, mostly around the descriptions of her parents’ final days. I should add that we both thought the opening short chapter was a fantastic beginning. Sets up all the key elements in the tale with great economy and suspense, all through the lens of a single anecdote. Brilliant!" - ET, Professor of modern languages
Read the Advance Information for
Self-Portrait with Parents here.
Read Patricia's
blog on the website for Breast Cancer Now.
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