Book info

• Title No Cunning Plan
• Author Tony Robinson
• Year 2016
• Genre Memoir

Sir Tony Robinson is a much-loved actor, presenter and author with a stellar career lasting over fifty years. In this autobiography he reveals how the boy from South Woodford went from child stardom in the first stage production of Oliver!, a pint-sized pickpocket desperately bleaching his incipient moustache, to comedy icon Baldrick, the loyal servant and turnip aficionado in Blackadder. It wasn't all plain sailing though. Along the way he was bullied by Steve Marriott, failed to impress Liza Minnelli and was pushed into a stinking London dock by John Wayne. He also entertained us with Maid Marion and Her Merry Men (which he wrote and starred in) and coped manfully when locked naked outside a theatre in Lincoln during the live tour of comedy series Who Dares Wins. He presented Time Team for twenty years, watching countless gardens ruthlessly dug up in the name of archaeology, and risked life and limb filming The Worst Jobs in History.

Thoughts

I love, love, love Tony Robinson and didn’t realise he’d written an autobiography, so when I saw that he read the audiobook version, I dived right in. There’s so much I didn’t know - he’s had such a varied career, so much on the stage, so much TV, packing so much in before Time Team! And all of it is told with rhythm and style and grace and honesty and wisdom and a self-depracating nature that is the reason he’s a national treasure. He’s not perfect, but who is? Even the political chapters were told so well I loved it all.

Rating: 5 / 5