Book Reviews: Stephen Fry’s Memoir and Autobiography

For those of you who don’t know, Stephen Fry have 3 different books published as his Memoir or Autobiography. The first one is Moab is my Washpot and it is about his troublesome childhood; the second: The Fry Chronicles is about his life after school and especially at university and third More Fool Me most about of his career thus far.

This post will be my “book reviews” about the first and second.

But first: is it just me that find it strange that he has written an autobiography that are 3 volumes (and possibly more)? Do you know of anybody else that has the same feat? John Cleese has only written one once-off autobiography. What makes Stephen Fry so special that he has 3???

2) The Fry Chronicles – an autobiography  by Stephen Fry

Back cover: (actually I found this inside seeing as the back cover of my book are just recommendations by the media)

Stephen Fry’s film, stage, radio and television credits are so numerous and wide-ranging that there is not the space here to  do them justice. It is enough to say that he has written, produced, directed, acted in or presented productions as varied as Wilde, the TV series Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster, the sketch show A Bit of Fry and Laurie, the panel game QI, the radio series Fry’s English Delight and documentaries on subjects as varied as manic depression, disappearing animals and the United States of America…

Rating: 4/5

Published: 2010

I am ashamed to say that I do not remember much of this book, but I did like the categories or chapters. Everything is categorised under words that begin with C.

1) Moab is my Washpot – Stephen Fry

p. 432 “No. I was Stephen. I was always going to be Stephen. I would always be that same maddening, monstrous mixture of pedantry, egoism, politeness, selfishness, kindliness, sneakiness, larkiness, sociability, loneliness, ambition, ordered calm and hidden intensity. ”

Afterword: p. 434 “You have seen me at my washpot scrubbing at the grime of years: to wallow in a washpot may not be the same thing as to be purified and cleansed, but I have come away from this very draining, highly bewildering and passionately intense few months feeling slightly less dirty. Less dirty about the first twenty years of my life, at least.” Aug 1997

Rating: 5/5

Published: 1997

Here is how these two books have helped me: 

I read these two books during a time in my life where I felt lonely, depressed, doubtful, etc. and it was blissful for me to know that Stephen Fry has felt the same way during his lifetime. If I ever do meet the man in the flesh (yeah right! probably not) I will thank him and tell him what the man in the pages meant to me.