As many of you will know, I’m not a big fan of the ‘googlebox’ and don’t often make an effort to watch (I’ve even lost track of Heroes, which I was actually really enjoying), I much prefer the radio.
So it’s interesting that the excellent programme I watched last night is a sort of ‘full circle’ for me.
I first heard bits of ‘Stuart: a life backwards’, a true story by Alexander Masters as a book of the week on Radio Four; I didn’t hear the whole thing so decided to read the book. It was sad, funny, fascinating and well written; I enjoyed it very much.
Last night on BBC2 (terrible scheduling as it was up against Michael Palin on BBC1 – why did they do that?), the story was shown as a dramatisation.
The actors who played Alexander and Stuart were brilliant, I already knew the story but this didn’t detract from the programme, and in a way made me want to watch more.
The difficult life of Stuart Shorter is an important one, a story that needs to be heard – there are people like him all around us – how many of us notice them? He may have been a thief, a drug addict, an alcoholic, violent and difficult; but he was also a person; a scared, hurt, confused and abused person – I like to think that Alexander Masters’ story means that we can learn from the mistakes that were made in Stuart’s life (by him and those around him).
More information can be found at the author’s website.
If you want to read the book, and you should, I recommend getting it from here where it is only £3.75 and you get to help grow trees with The Woodland Trust.
