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andrew_j_r's review against another edition
4.0
For a celebrity autobiography this is refreshing. Of course I read it because I am a Doctor Who fan but actually there is only a small section devoted to that show - Peter has had a varied career in which he has starred on stage and (small) screen, but despite that he comes across as a very normal person, in touch with reality and a better person for it. And actually I had no idea that he had done quite that much stuff.
He doesn’t take things too seriously, admits that his life just sort of happened without a grand plan, and you are left thinking he’s one of the worlds nice guys. Well worth reading.
He doesn’t take things too seriously, admits that his life just sort of happened without a grand plan, and you are left thinking he’s one of the worlds nice guys. Well worth reading.
kmg365's review
4.0
I've been a fan of Peter's since I first saw him on tv. Can't remember the year, but it was whenever my local PBS station started airing All Creatures Great and Small. In pre-internet days, it was difficult to be in the US, and a fan of an actor who only worked in the UK, believe me. Not only was there no IMDb, there wasn't even Entertainment Tonight until the fall of 1981. I can't remember when or how I found out that he'd been cast as the 5th Doctor, but I do remember waiting and waiting (and waiting) for the Tom Baker episodes to be done airing (also on PBS) so I could finally, FINALLY see Peter in the role. I still haven't seen a good chunk of his TV work-- only some of A Very Peculiar Practice, a bit of Fear, Stress and Anger, and none of Distant Shores. I stumbled upon the complete series of At Home with the Braithwaites only a couple of weeks ago on a free streaming channel, and rejoiced-- BBC America started airing it shortly after it aired in the UK, but did not air the entire series. That was something they were notorious for-- they stopped airing Law and Order UK pretty soon after Peter joined the cast. I'm still searching for the second series of Great British Car Journeys.
The biggest question I am left with after finishing the audio book is: Why in the name of all that is holy did Peter not read the audio book? I mean, for a guy who has made a career of accepting pretty much every job he's offered, and is perpetually worried about continuing to get work, did he not think about getting two paychecks from one project?
Since Peter is pretty much at the top of my favorite actor list, it's sad that I'll always remember this book as the one I was listening to when I found out that a dear (but far away) friend had passed away unexpectedly. Peter seems like a nice guy, so I don't think he'll mind if I ignore him for a few paragraphs and talk about my friend Dawn.
Goodreads is a perfect place to talk about her, since she was the most voracious reader I've ever known. She loved to read material that most people would find challenging. She went hunting for, and found, a Great Books book group in her home town, hoping to find people with which to discuss the writings of Greek philosophers. Her favorite book was Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
We met in the nerdiest of fashions, on a message board for a small tv-related fandom. We forged a fast friendship despite living 1,500 miles apart, and despite significant differences. She was a self-professed gun nut; I was raised as a Quaker. We were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. I was east, she was west. But our mutual love of books, reading, a few old tv shows, and nature were enough to drive a 20+ year friendship, including two trips to Yellowstone National Park, and a jaunt to Michigan to see one of her favorite actors in a stage performance. She got to meet him because she'd flown so far to attend, and the people running the theater at the tiny college were so impressed that they arranged it.
The details of her death were sad, and in other circumstances, it could probably have been avoided. It's going to be awhile before I can remember her with joy in my heart, rather than grief and guilt that I wasn't closer and able to help. If she was ever going to believe in an afterlife, it would have been The Rainbow Bridge, where all the cats she rescued, fostered, helped at spay/neuter clinics, and welcomed into her home would greet her. Rest easy, friend, with a kitty snuggled nearby, and a book in your hands.
Thanks, Pete, for your patience. For heaven's sake, someone give that man an award. Preferably one that doesn't fall apart immediately.
nwhyte's review
4.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3279791.html
I met Peter Davison and his wife Elizabeth Morton at Loncon in 2014, and was just a bit starstruck. This was at the pre-Hugo reception, where he was attending in case The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot won (I had voted for it, mainly because it is very enjoyable but partly because I am briefly visible in it at about 08:03, but it didn't win). I chatted to them for a few minutes, and then Elizabeth's phone rang; it was David and Georgia, who had been dropped at the wrong end of the ExCel building, so I went off to get them.
I've read a lot of celebrity memoirs, including Doctor Who memoirs, by now, and this really is one of the most entertaining of them. There are some major surprises as well, of which the first is that his father was black - or anyway, mixed-race, from Guyana (then British Guiana). Obviously his English mother's genes won out in terms of skin and hair colour, but you can clearly see the resemblance from the pictures in the book.
The book is told as a series of flashbacks in chronological order, as seen from a tour in 2015-2016. Young Peter Moffett did appallingly badly at school - “Perhaps my greatest triumph was managing to fail CSE woodwork. As my teacher, Mr Bidgood, said in his state of shock: ‘All you have to do is recognise wood.’” He studied at Central, but it took a long time for his career to get going; a brief appearance in The Tomorrow People was followed by a dry spell, and then suddenly in 1978 he hit the big time as junior vet Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small. The extent to which this was cult family viewing in the late 1970s and early 1980s cannot be exaggerated; as the world around us appeared to be going to hell, here was a lovely nostalgic visit to a gentler past, where young Tristan was frequently brought up short by his older brother Siegfried (as played by Robert Hardy), genially observed by James Herriot (Christopher Timothy).
When he was named as the fifth Doctor in November 1980, it was the first item on the BBC news that evening, ahead of some bloke called Reagan being elected to something or other. It did not last; after Doctor Who, and the subsequent successes of A Very Peculiar Practice and Campion, he had a very slack decade and a second divorce, and his personal life and career only really picked up again around 2000. But now, particularly with the renewal of fannish interest in his earlier years, it sounds like things are on track again.
The anecdotes are great fun, told with a combination of acute observation (mostly sympathetic) of his fellow actors, and self-deprecation (sometimes brutal). When we met in 2014, I asked if he had written anything other than The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, and he said that the only other script he had done was for his video message to Gallifrey 22 in 2011. I don't know if that was completely true then, or if it's still true now, but based on those dramas and this book, I hope he tries some more writing. It's good stuff.
I met Peter Davison and his wife Elizabeth Morton at Loncon in 2014, and was just a bit starstruck. This was at the pre-Hugo reception, where he was attending in case The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot won (I had voted for it, mainly because it is very enjoyable but partly because I am briefly visible in it at about 08:03, but it didn't win). I chatted to them for a few minutes, and then Elizabeth's phone rang; it was David and Georgia, who had been dropped at the wrong end of the ExCel building, so I went off to get them.
I've read a lot of celebrity memoirs, including Doctor Who memoirs, by now, and this really is one of the most entertaining of them. There are some major surprises as well, of which the first is that his father was black - or anyway, mixed-race, from Guyana (then British Guiana). Obviously his English mother's genes won out in terms of skin and hair colour, but you can clearly see the resemblance from the pictures in the book.
The book is told as a series of flashbacks in chronological order, as seen from a tour in 2015-2016. Young Peter Moffett did appallingly badly at school - “Perhaps my greatest triumph was managing to fail CSE woodwork. As my teacher, Mr Bidgood, said in his state of shock: ‘All you have to do is recognise wood.’” He studied at Central, but it took a long time for his career to get going; a brief appearance in The Tomorrow People was followed by a dry spell, and then suddenly in 1978 he hit the big time as junior vet Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small. The extent to which this was cult family viewing in the late 1970s and early 1980s cannot be exaggerated; as the world around us appeared to be going to hell, here was a lovely nostalgic visit to a gentler past, where young Tristan was frequently brought up short by his older brother Siegfried (as played by Robert Hardy), genially observed by James Herriot (Christopher Timothy).
When he was named as the fifth Doctor in November 1980, it was the first item on the BBC news that evening, ahead of some bloke called Reagan being elected to something or other. It did not last; after Doctor Who, and the subsequent successes of A Very Peculiar Practice and Campion, he had a very slack decade and a second divorce, and his personal life and career only really picked up again around 2000. But now, particularly with the renewal of fannish interest in his earlier years, it sounds like things are on track again.
The anecdotes are great fun, told with a combination of acute observation (mostly sympathetic) of his fellow actors, and self-deprecation (sometimes brutal). When we met in 2014, I asked if he had written anything other than The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, and he said that the only other script he had done was for his video message to Gallifrey 22 in 2011. I don't know if that was completely true then, or if it's still true now, but based on those dramas and this book, I hope he tries some more writing. It's good stuff.
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