A Funny Thing Happened On The Way

by Nancy Spain

Nancy Spain was one of the most celebrated - and notorious - writers and broadcasters of the 40s, 50s and 60s. Hilarious, controversial and brilliant, she lived openly as a lesbian (sharing a household with her two lovers and their various children) and was frequently litigated against for her newspaper columns - Evelyn Waugh successfully sued her for libel... twice. She was also a fantastic crime novelist (and according to the Guardian, one of the 50 best female crime thriller writers of all time).

Following on from WHY I AM NOT A MILLIONAIRE, with the same wit, style and fascinating detail, A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY is also about her time spent on Skiathos, showing Nancy Spain's glorious warmth and love of life.

'Full of fun, and that zest of intelligence that never left her ... Sharing her own feelings of happiness was Nancy's art and privilege, a rare on in this day and place' Sunday Times

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

Published February 8, 2022

About the author

Nancy Spain was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1917, the great-niece of the legendary Mrs Beeton.

She began her career as a journalist and occasional actor in radio plays. After the Second World War she published a very successful memoir of her time working as a driver and in the press office of the WRNS. She later wrote columns for the Daily Express and She magazine, made many radio and television appearances, and published a series of detective novels.

She and her partner Joan Werner Laurie were killed in a plane crash in 1964.

Reviews

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Nancy Spain. My mum gave me one of her cook books a few years ago and I loved it so much I sought out everything I could by her. I read her first volume of memoirs and it was an absolute delight to be given this to read. She is very funny indeed. Self deprecating and madly egocentric, a terrible gossip and name dropper and all of this makes her incredibly readable. She writes about buying a plot of land on a Greek island and building a house on it, but her stories digress and wander off here there and everywhere and that's another wonderful thing about the book. It's like having a conversation with her rather than reading a book by her.

[JH · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huh? That is how I felt about this book. I was unable to recognize any of the 'famous' people listed in the book. I found the book in the travel to Greece section of the library but there is so little about Greece. Still the author has an excellent light hearted writing style that kept me to the end of the book.