Ruskin Park - Sylvia, Me and the BBC

A memoir about my remarkable mother

My mother, Sylvia, in the 1930s

Forgive me, for once again I am straying from this newsletter’s #healthtech brief. But today sees the publication of a book which has been many years in the making and its arrival in bookshops is a moment of some emotion and great pride for me.

Ruskin Park: Sylvia, Me and the BBC is a memoir about my mother and is built around what I found when I cleared her one bedroom council flat after her death in 1996. The flat in Ruskin Park House, where she had lived since 1955 and where she brought me up, was packed with thousands of letters and documents telling the story of her life over 60 years - letters to her sisters, her BBC colleagues, her lawyers. At the centre of the book is the story of her affair with my father, a younger colleague in the BBC Drama department.

In the two weeks up to publication I have put on social media every day items from the collection of my mother’s letters and documents with an explanation of what they mean. I have collected them here - I hope you will be intrigued and want to buy the book. Click here for various purchase options.