East of Croydon

Author Sue Perkins
Narrator Sue Perkins
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 18 October 2018
Run Time 10 hours and 24 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Autobiography: arts and entertainment, Classic travel writing, Humour, Memoirs, Performing arts, Places and peoples: general and pictorial works, Travel guides: adventure holidays.

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What to expect

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of East of Croydon written and read by Sue Perkins.

A few years ago I was asked if I'd like to make a documentary on the Mekong River, travelling from the vast delta in Vietnam to the remote and snowy peaks of Tibet.

Up until that point, the farthest East I'd been was Torremolinos, in the Costa Del Sol.

Here's the thing:

I am scared of flying.
I have zero practical skills.
I can't survive if I am more than a three minute walk from a supermarket.
For the last seven years I have suffered with crippling anxiety
I bolt when panicked.
I cannot bear to witness humans or animals in distress
I have no ability to learn languages.
I am a terrible hypochondriac

And I am no good with boats.

So I said yes.

Critics Review

Alongside laugh-out-loud travel stories, the book also provides a moving account of her coming to terms with her father’s death

Daily Mirror

Vivid, laugh-out-loud, moving

Sunday Express

Alongside a wealth of vivid and hilarious travel stories, Sue also writes movingly about coming to terms with the recent death of her father as she stands beside the Ganges

Daily Express

The former Bake Off presenter journeys far out of her comfort zone on travels from India to Indonesia, sharing entertaining travel stories and a moving account of grieving for her father

Pick of the holiday reads, Daily Mirror

An unvarnished, endearing and very funny account

Woman & Home

Part memoir, part travel guide. A fab account full of wit and emotion

Prima

Her misadventures deliver laughs aplenty, but she’s also engaged with the places, politics and crucially, the people. Enjoyable, interesting and often moving

Book of the month, Wanderlust

Praise for Spectacles:

Drama, tears and laughs – Spectacles has got it all. A brilliant, touching memoir suffused with love, it reminds you that life is best lived at wonky angles. I ADORED it

The Miniaturist

Very funny . . . It seems there are two Sue Perkins: the TV one, who gabbles and pratfalls, and the sensitive one who aches. The first of course, exists to protect the second. They can both write. The first writes comedy, the second tragedy; in this sense, reading her memoir is very like meeting her

Sunday Times

It’s a proper book . . . so well written. Tight & bright & full of inspiration

Radio 2

Utterly wonderful. It’s very, very funny and poignant and it’s very Sue Perkins and that’s the bliss of it

Love, Nina and Man at the Helm

Relentlessly cheering, Spectacles is as charming and funny as Perkins herself. Like going for a long, slightly drunken lunch with your naughtiest friend

Red Magazine

Brilliantly written . . . fearlessly honest and full of heart, it will also make you laugh like a gibbon

Heat *****

I absolutely loved it . . . whip smart and very funny

Woman & Home

Life, love and loss – it’s all here … Warm, crisp and beautifully layered – like its author, Spectacles is a complete delight

Independent on Sunday

[A] deftly written and belly-laugh funny autobiography . . . Though she never suggests she might be remotely brainy, she clearly is. Her vocabulary makes Will Self’s seem lacking, her writing is full of discreetly clever allusions . . . If she wants her readers to like her, she certainly achieved it with this reviewer who laughed and cried and secretly wants her as a best friend

Daily Express

Sue’s memoir will leave you feeling like you’ve made a new best friend. Introducing us to a cast of friends, family and love interests, and not forgetting a psychopathic nun, Sue picks apart life in a refreshingly honest, warm and downright hilarious way… Spectacles firmly cements her as an exciting writer of the future

OK Magazine

This smart and funny story is far from the photo-heavy, ghost-written volumes that it will compete with . . . Perkins is such a good writer . . . incapable of writing a boring sentence

Sunday Express

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