A Life and a Half

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents A Life and a Half, written and read by Chris Bryant

‘Charming, unexpected, honest’ RORY STEWART

The gripping, remarkably candid story of one man’s unorthodox life before politics, from Labour minister and Sunday Times-bestselling author Chris Bryant

‘It is often said that the politicians of today have no hinterland, but then along comes Chris Bryant with a fascinating, frank, funny and moving account of how he became one’ REVEREND RICHARD COLES

Before he was a politician, Chris Bryant was an Anglican priest, baptising babies and holding the hands of the dying. Before that, he manned the barricades in Latin America, and before that, he was the scared son of an alcoholic mother and an estranged father.

This is a no-holds-barred account of a minister’s truly unconventional life before politics – one that has left Bryant equally at home behind the altar, in sweaty gay clubs, on the hustings or the stage. With characteristic frankness, he recounts growing up in General Franco’s Spain, acting alongside some of the most talented names of the day as a teenager, and caring for his brother and mother as she descended into addiction. He ran the family home from sixteen, became ordained at twenty-four and came out as gay shortly after. And that’s just the early years.

A Life and a Half tells a gripping story of bishops and actors, drag queens and pushy candidates, stuffed with moments of joy and hilarity and sorrow and abuse. All while tracking the landscape of late-twentieth-century British politics, from Thatcher to the birth of New Labour. It is a memoir like no other.

Critics Review

This absorbing memoir is the kind of book those who bemoan career politicians will love – it stops when Chris Bryant becomes the MP for Rhondda in 2001. Instead, it focuses on his formative years growing up with an alcoholic mother and absent father, suffering sexual abuse, and being ordained into the priesthood. A Life and a Half is perceptive, revealing and full of suppressed trauma, but it can also take on the quality of a mischievous confessional, particularly when recounting wild times in Latin American Christian ministries. Unorthodox but beguilingly human
Observer
Bryant is one of the handful of sitting MPs who can genuinely write. As you’d expect, A Life and a Half is a terrific book, funny, frank and moving in equal measure. It is not just a story of changing careers: in many ways it is a story of coming to terms with yourself . . . Although it is not a political memoir, it is in many ways the story of how Bryant went from a boy unable to speak to one of Parliament’s most eloquent MPs. We can only hope that we might one day get an account of everything that has happened to Bryant in the 21st century that is half as good as this book
Financial Times
Startling . . . Filled with a litany of Bryant’s eye-popping escapades
Irish Times
Charming, unexpected, honest
RORY STEWART
This is a riveting read: self-revelatory, candid about others, and packed with outrageous stories . . . This autobiography is also the story of a man who survived an appalling childhood to lead a varied and worthwhile life as a priest and then politician . . . All told with self-deprecating humour
Church Times
It is often said that the politicians of today have no hinterland, but then along comes Chris Bryant with a fascinating, frank, funny and moving account of how he became one; from young Conservative wannabe actor, Welsh-born, raised in Spain, to Church of England priest, to first out gay Labour MP in Wales. And all before his fortieth birthday
REVEREND RICHARD COLES
Having previously written several books, including a biography of Glenda Jackson, he has now turned the pen on himself in A Life and a Half. It spans his mother’s alcoholism, his parents’ divorce, the university interlude in which he dabbled with being a member of the Conservative Party, his relationships with women and men, his spell as an Anglican vicar and the liberation of leaving the Church and discovering gay life in London in the 1990s
Sunday Times
An unexpected delight, fearlessly frank, just a little bit scurrilous and full of heart
GRAHAM NORTON
An MP’s memoir that stops as soon as he actually arrives in parliament, focusing instead on the much more human story of how he got there
New Statesman
This is a fabulous, funny and inspiring book. Chris is one of the most important, individual and principled voices in public life. This is the unexpected and fascinating story of how he came to be who he is – and thank goodness it worked out this way!
DAVID TENNANT
Funny, moving and at times almost painfully honest, this is the best memoir of a politician’s formative years since Alan Johnson’s This Boy
DAVID KYNASTON
Writing about his life thus far, Chris Bryant’s A Life and a Half is a terrific read, smart and reflective by turns. A life of reinvention, rich in struggle, survival and swagger, moving yet unsentimental. A book of laugh out loud encounters, deep pain and great encouragement. A book that says never underestimate the life journeys of our parliamentarians. I wonder if that courageous little boy, caring for himself, his mother and his younger brother could ever have imagined such a life. The work of care continues. Well done him
ADJOA ANDOH
Chris’s reflections on adolescence, the discovery of his sexuality and his path through modern politics are rendered with striking honesty and humour . . . Rich with anecdote, at times bittersweet, often wry, and always authentic
RICHARD ARMITAGE
Riveting, raw and hilarious. Bryant’s honesty is a force for good. Humble and proud in turn – you won’t put this down
HELEN LEDERER

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