Life Is a Joke A Writer's Memoir

An optimistic, poignant and often very funny account of how creativity can banish the disagreeables that permeate life - 'a sexually transmitted disease with a hundred percent mortality.¿ The hazards and secrets of the book trade and writing for television and the theatre are revealed and co-mingle with the joys of travel, family and entertaining. The alarums and excursions of an arson attack and the efforts to ease the lot of fellow writers imprisoned for their beliefs in democracy are eclipsed temporarily as Rosemary Friedman emerges from the valley of the shadow of death into which she is unexpectedly precipitated. With her skill and acute eye she takes us behind the scenes of the theatre (in which applause is the writer¿s personal laurel wreath) and lets us into the machinations of auditions, directors and stage managers and the dynamics of plays themselves in which every actor is expected to be 'dead letter perfect¿.

Rosemary Friedman was educated at Queen¿s College, Harley Street, and University College, London. She has published 24 titles and many of her twenty novels have been widely translated and serialised by the BBC. Her short stories have been syndicated worldwide. She has written commissioned screenplays (UK and US) and television scripts, and has judged a number of literary prizes. Her three stage plays all had successful runs. She is married to psychiatrist Dennis Friedman (An Unsolicited Gift, Arcadia 2010) and lives in London. She is a Fellow of PEN (Executive Committee 1993-1998); member of Bafta, member of the Writers¿ Guild; member of the Royal Society of Literature and member of the Society of Authors (Executive Committee 1989-1992). www.rosemaryfriedman.co.uk