Back in the Day: Melvyn Bragg's deeply affecting, first ever memoir

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Le Guin constantly comes at things from new directions: championing abortion in a short devastating piece about life before Roe v Wade as a way of saving the children you do want to have; exploring how men have “let themselves be silenced” by eschewing the “mother tongue” of conversation and story for the “father tongue” of power and politics; contrasting Virginia Woolf’s fertile influence on 20th-century literature with the “dead end” of Ulysses. He has an amazing memory for detail, but what shines through it all is his love for the place and its people. That makes the book very special.— Ken Follett The best thing he's ever written . . . What a world he captures here. You can almost smell it' Rachel Cooke, Observer

The lies were to do with my mother’s illegitimacy. I gradually realised my “grandmother” was not my grandmother, my “uncles” were not my uncles… I massively regret that I didn’t ask some of the older people, later on: what really happened? You’re frightened of hurting people involved, yet it might actually help them. Many of the other pieces in this book also argue for a paradigm shift in our way of viewing plants and nature. Biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake explores the origins of plant life and especially the often-overlooked role played by mycorrhizal fungi, both in the evolution of plants and their continued existence. He notes that 90 percent of plants exist in a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizal fungi and that they are “a more fundamental part of planthood than fruit, flowers, leaves, wood or even roots”. His mother, Ethel, was illegitimate. Fostered, “she must have felt branded” in such a small town, and yet “she made illegitimacy the springboard of her character” and lived into her 90s: “she did not smoke, rarely drank and never swore”. His mother left school at 14 and worked in a clothing factory. His father, Stanley, had been a gifted child and had won a school scholarship when he was 12, but could not take it up because his parents could not afford to lose him. His life was hard and yet Bragg admires his hard-won tolerance and approach to life: “Never be a coward. Respect those who are less fortunate. You are better than no one. But no one is better than you.”Kim Walker and Nataly Allasi Canales – both specialists in medicinal plants – have studied the history and biology of the fever tree, Cinchona, which grows in the Andean cloud forests. Its bitter bark was the only known cure for malaria and from the 1600s it became “an imperial tool”, used to enable Western expansion into tropical regions across the world. To the authors, this “instrument of power” symbolises the modern world’s continuing efforts to exploit nature. This is a brilliantly written account of the Ottoman empire in all its opulence and brutality. Rich in colourful historical anecdotes, de Bellaigue brings 16th-century statecraft vividly alive, and offers a chilling insight into the ruthlessness and loneliness of one of the most powerful men of the age.

Partly to defuse the emotion, we switch to discussing his time at the BBC. He was one of the first grammar-school boys to get a general traineeship there, and although he spent the biggest and starriest part of his career at ITV, he leads the charge in defence of his alma mater. It is equally the tale of the people and place that formed him. Bragg indelibly portrays his parents and local characters from pub regulars to vicars, teachers and hardmen, and vividly captures the community-spirited northern town - steeped in the old ways but on the cusp of post-war change. A poignant elegy to a vanished era as well as the glories of the Lake District, it illuminates what made him the writer, broadcaster and champion of the arts he is today.Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a member of the Inuit community in Quebec, Canada, writes that “in our language we have no word for ‘nature’, despite our deep affinity with the land, which teaches us how to live in harmony with the natural world.” The Western worldview set “man” and “nature” against each other, seeing the natural realm as something to be conquered, whereas Inuit “place themselves within, not apart from, nature”. Climate change directly threatens the traditional Inuit way of life and indeed the Arctic home of Watt-Cloutier’s people. In this moving essay, she calls for a profound reimagining of our attitude to nature: “Indigenous wisdom is the medicine we seek in healing our planet and creating a sustainable world.” The best thing he’s ever written . . . What a world he captures here. You can almost smell it’ Rachel Cooke, Observer