Making It: How Love, Kindness and Community Helped Me Repair My Life

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I have huge respect for him after reading about his successes, failures and how he’s persevered through it all to arrive at the place he’s now at.

Books — Jay Blades

The honesty of the book makes it very moving especially as Jay does his best but struggles to find his direction in life, his conditioning within a racist society almost takes him down routes to disaster he manages to pull himself back from the brink and is fortunate to have caring friends around him to help. However, aside from being entertaining, interesting and engaging, I think Making It is an important book.With dyslexia affecting about 10%, the statistical links between receipt of free school meals and attainment suggest that poverty and the lack of resources to combat it account for almost all the rest. On 1 March, 2023 Jay Blades MBE became the first ever Chancellor of Buckinghamshire New University (BNU), where he was a student before launching a career which has seen him go onto become an award winning BBC presenter, the nation’s favourite furniture up-cycler, host his own television shows, receive an MBE for his Services to Craft, give back to communities across the UK and become an ambassador for The Prince’s Foundation and Heritage Crafts. In September 2022 Blades appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and said that his childhood had been "blighted by racism and violence".

Jay Blades - Wikipedia Jay Blades - Wikipedia

He seemed an interesting character and when I saw he had an autobiography, I thought it would be an interesting read. Also in that year he released a memoir, Making It: How Love, Kindness and Community Helped Me Repair My Life, published by Pan Macmillan UK.Based on his dress and bearing, I had assumed that he was a member of the gentry, although that's somewhat at odds with his mannerisms and familiar conversation. It ranges through an estate-bound but happy childhood and his initial run-in with racism when he enters secondary schooling, on to a troubled and violent adolescence that acts as a prelude to a most remarkable emotional rollercoaster of a life. It was extraordinary to watch as the teacher applied different teaching methods to help his students.