Fig Tree wins six-way auction for Baroness Lola Young's 'galvanising' memoir

Fig Tree has won a six-way auction for Baroness Lola Young’s memoir, Eight Weeks: Looking Back, Moving Forwards, Defying the Odds. 

Publishing director Helen Garnons-Williams acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Hattie Grünewald at The Blair Partnership for publication in November 2024. 

Eight Weeks is a "deeply moving and inspiring" memoir that tells how Baroness Young of Hornsey came from a childhood spent in foster care to becoming one of the first Black women in the House of Lords. 

In her lifetime, Young has been an actress, academic, activist and crossbench peer, but in her early life moved between foster care placements for 18 years. Eight Weeks is a "spirited, eye-opening and beautifully written account of being a child in care and a Black child in a white family and is a vital part of contemporary Black British history." 

Garnons-Williams said: "We are proud to be publishing Baroness Young’s galvanizing memoir, a book written with grace, honesty and hard-won humour, and a testament to the ways in which our pasts might shape us, but do not need to define us."

Young added: "I started writing this memoir some years ago, encouraged by so many people who thought it was a story that needed to be told. Now I’m excited to be publishing it with the wonderful Fig Tree. I hope that Eight Weeks will resonate with all those who’ve had childhoods that led them to wonder who they are and whether they can aspire to have a positive future.

"I also want to make a space for stories from the 1950s and 1960s that dispel some of the nostalgia-informed myths of that period, and to indicate the rich variety of narratives with a focus on African diaspora experiences that are yet to be revealed."