This long-awaited memoir from one of Britain’s best-loved celebrities – a writer, broadcaster, activist, comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly 40 years, presenter of QI and Great British Bake Off star – is an autobiography with a difference: as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it. 
‘Between the Stops’ is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It’s about a bus trip really, because it’s my view from the Number 12 bus (mostly top deck, the seat at the front on the right), a double-decker that plies its way from Dulwich, in South East London, where I was living, to where I sometimes work – at the BBC, in the heart of the capital. It’s not a sensible way to write a memoir at all, probably, but it’s the way things pop into your head as you travel, so it’s my way’. 
From London facts including where to find the blue plaque for Una Marson, ‘The first black woman programme maker at the BBC’, to discovering the best Spanish coffee under Southwark’s railway arches; from a brief history of lady gangsters at Elephant and Castle to memories of climbing Mount Sinai and, at the request of a fellow traveller, reading aloud the Ten Commandments; from the story behind Pissarro’s painting of Dulwich Station to performing in Footlights with Emma Thompson; from painful memoires of being sent to Coventry while at a British boarding school to thinking about how Wombells Travelling Circus of 1864 haunts Peckham Rye; from anecdotes about meeting Prince Charles, Monica Lewinsky and Grayson Perry to Bake-Off antics; from stories of a real and lasting friendship with John McCarthy to the importance of family and the daunting navigation of the Zambezi River in her father’s canoe, this Sandi Toksvig-style memoir is, as one would expect and hope, packed full of surprises. 

I don’t normally read memoirs or autobiographies. I’m glad I made an exception for Sandi Toksvig’s remarkable memoir, ‘Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus‘. I knew almost nothing about Sandi Toksvig’s life but I’ve always enjoyed her wit and erudition when I’ve seen her on television, either as a comedian or as a host of game shows like QI or The News Quiz. We’re from the same generation, we have similar views and she usually succeeds in making me laugh even if the laughter is often of the kind I use to deal with how seriously messed up the world often is.

One of the things that puts me off reading memoirs is that the process of turning a life into a linear narrative often seems to convert memories into fictions that are too tidy to be real. I was attracted to Sandi Toksvig’s memoir partly because she’s avoided the traditional “I was born on a dark and stormy night…* narrative by structuring her story as a series of memories and reflections triggered by what she sees around her as she looks out from the topdeck of the Number 12 bus that takes her from her London home to the BBC headquarters.

Sandi Toksvig is a history nerd with a passion for collecting obscure historical facts about how the people of London lived their lives. When she looks out of the bus window, the London she sees is coloured by her knowledge of who and what used to be in that spot She’s also passionate about feminism and is and always has been enraged by the inequalities that continue to make the lives of women harder. When Sandi Toksvig looks out of the bus window, she is constantly aware of how almost all of the Blue Plaques and statues and street names celebrating London’s great and good belong to white men while the contributions of women to shaping the lives of Londoners are allowed to fade away of are actively erased.

The details of Sandi Toksvig’s life are folded, like fruit in a Christmas cake, into her discourse on the London streets she’s travelling through, That many of her stories are funny and are told with wit and skill was no surprise. What did surprise me was the quiet intimacy that she created as she talked about the painful times in her life, periods of loneliness, depression and despair, her travels into unpleasant and distressing places, her encounters with institutionalised prejudice as well as the many things that have brought her joy, to which she often appends the word ‘glorious’.

For me, listening to Sandi Toksvig share her stories was a glorious experience. I felt moved by the bad things that she’s lived through and cheered by her resilience, intelligence, humour and compassion. There were many occaisions when an observation or reaction she shared made me think “So it’s not just me. She thinks/feels that way too!” , a reaction which I found oddly comforting.

I strongly recommend the audiobook version as it make the book fee even more like a conversation with a friend. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.