Born the weekend of Pearl Harbour in 1941, Sheridan Morley grew up in California in the closing days of the Hollywood Raj, where he knew, albeit fleetingly, Garbo and Dietrich and the colony of English actors 'out in the midday sun'. He went to school in England, and then Oxford University, followed by the start of Sheridan's life in news and arts journalism and as a drama critic and biographer. He recounts tales of so many well-known faces in the media and theatre worlds, during a life of two marriages, three children, two grandchildren, one major nervous crack-up and thirty years of BBC radio arts programmes. As Sheridan himself says, 'life is a critical condition', and his witty, fascinating autobiography marks his 60th birthday.