A Shirt Box Full of Songs

From singing to the postman when she was two years old to her annual sell-out tours in the 2000s, Barbara Dickson has been captivating her fans for the best part of sixty years. In her autobiography she describes the joys of growing up in Fife with her talented brother and loving parents, of moving to Edinburgh to find her place in the world and the stresses and strains of trying to make a living on the Scottish folk scene. Not content to have just a successful singing career, she turned to another: acting. A regular on prime-time television, Barbara also took to musicals and was the original lead role in Spend, Spend, Spend. Her hugely successful time onstage earned her many acting accolades but her pursuit of perfection led to complete exhaustion from which she fought hard to recover. Barbara writes beautifully about the close relationships she cultivated over these years with people such as Willy Russell, Elaine Paige and Billy Connolly. The result is a warm, fascinating story encompassing the best of British music, stage and television.