Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

Over the years Julie Andrews has been much interviewed in the press and on television, but she has never before revealed the true story of her childhood and upbringing. In HOME she vividly recreates the years before the movies. An idyllic early childhood in Surrey was cut short when her parents divorced and her mother remarried. The family moved to London, and there are vivid scenes of life during the Blitz. Her mother went into musical theatre with her stepfather, who encouraged Julie to have singing lessons which led to the discovery that her voice had phenomenal range and strength for someone her age. Before long she was appearing on stage with her parents. She soon realised how much she enjoyed looking out into the black auditorium with the spotlights on her. By the time she was a teenager, she was supporting her whole family with her singing. A London Palladium pantomime led to a leading role in THE BOYFRIEND on Broadway at 19. Parts in MY FAIR LADY opposite Rex Harrison and CAMELOT with Richard Burton soon followed, and there are wonderful anecdotes about the actors and actresses of her day.But this is far more than a collection of show stories (it's not until the last page of the book that Julie gets the call from Disney for MARY POPPINS), HOME is an honest, touching and revealing memoir of the early life of a true icon. Reviews "the book is magic... Andrews is far too polite to exploit her catalogue of hurts, but some moments really sting" -- Antonia Quirke SUNDAY TIMES This book is several dozen cuts above the usual showbiz memoir. I eagerly await the next instalment" -- Roger Lewis SUNDAY EXPRESS "it is precisely the frankness which gives the book such an admirbly unsentimental tone." -- Michael Arditti DAILY TELEGRAPH "most of the book is painfully shrewd and written with delicacy and pathos" INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE "Candid and perceptive, providing a vivid portrait of her formative years" Good Book Guide "Andrews, who has written several children's books (The Great American Mousical; Mandy), both solo and with her daughter, now dances in a different direction with this delightful remembrance of her own childhood and engrossing prelude to her cinematic career. Spanning events from her 1935 birth to the early 1960s, she covers her rise to fame and ends with Walt Disney casting her in Mary Poppins (1963). Setting the stage with a family tree backdrop, she balances the sad struggles of relatives and hard drinkers with mirthful family tales and youthful vocal lessons amid rationing and the London Blitz: My mother pulled back the blackout curtains and gasped—for there, snuggly settled in the concrete square of the courtyard, was the incendiary bomb. A BBC show led to a London musical at age 12: My song literally stopped the show. People rose to their feet and would not stop clapping. Her mother's revelation of her true father left her reeling when she was 15, but she continued touring, did weekly BBC broadcasts and was Broadway-bound by 1954 to do The Boyfriend. The heart of her book documents the rehearsals, tryouts and smash 1956 opening of My Fair Lady. Readers will rejoice, since Andrews is an accomplished writer who holds back nothing while adding a patina of poetry to the antics and anecdotes throughout this memoir of bittersweet backstage encounters and theatrical triumphs." Publishers Weekly Author Biography Dame Julie Andrews is an Emmy, Grammy and Academy-Award-winning actress and singer, best-known for her roles in MARY POPPINS and THE SOUND OF MUSIC.