Virago scoops 'eye-opening' memoir from Toksvig

Virago has scooped an "eye-opening” memoir from broadcaster Sandi Toksvig based around what she sees from the upper deck of a London bus.

Between the Stops The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus will be published on 31st October and Toksvig will also read the audio edition.

The QI host and Bake-Off star said: “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). 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.”

Described as “packed full of surprises”, the book roams from where to find the blue plaque for Una Marson, the first black woman programme maker at the BBC, to attending NASA’s launch of the first man on the moon. It takes in Elephant and Castle’s female gangsters, climbing Mount Sinai, painful memoires of being sent to Coventry while at a British boarding school and anecdotes about meeting Monica Lewinsky, Emma Thompson and John McCarthy.

Virago chair Lennie Goodings, who bought world English rights rights from Gill Coleridge at RCW, said: “It is also a wake-up call to get off our phones, look up and to talk to each other because as Sandi says, some of the greatest adventures lie on our own doorsteps.  To travel with Sandi Toksvig is wonderful, eye-opening, a laugh and inspiring.  We are thrilled.”

To support its publication, Toksvig will be appearing at events in London on 31st October, Manchester on 2nd November, Edinburgh the following day and Bristol on 5th November.