Sandi Toksvig - Between The Stops

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific read

I loved Between The Stops. I was a little dubious about the initial premise, which sounded a bit contrived, but in fact it’s a delightful read, full of wit, well argued good sense and extremely interesting oddments about all sorts of things.

The set-up is that Sandi travels regularly on the Number 12 bus from her home in East Dulwich to where she works in central London. She is genuinely fascinated (to the point of geekdom) by the places through which she passes on the journey: snippets of local history, interesting shops and people, the roads and who they are named after and so on. She uses these also as jumping-off points for bits of autobiography, anecdote and opinion – which sounds a bit iffy as a device, but in fact is interesting, thoughtful and very funny in places.

What comes across is that Sandi is humane, intelligent, thoughtful, passionate about injustice and very funny. She achieves an excellent balance between these things and has the judgement to know when to make serious points in a witty way. She is generally kind to people, but isn’t above the occasional wittily waspish remark, like the time she sat between Ken Dodd and Julian Fellowes at a dinner: “Ken was genuinely fascinating and Julian was impressive in the self-belief that he was too.”

In short, this is a terrific read; it’s very enjoyable and with some real substance. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to Virago for an ARC via NetGalley.)