In short: Iain Finlayson’s nonfiction reviews | The TimesSusannah Herbert
September 22, 2007
Silver River: A Family Story by Daisy Goodwin Fourth Estate, £16.99
The fashion among poets and critics for exorcising parental ghosts through biography has sometimes produced a rather turgid stream of consciousness, but Silver River runs bright and clear, a quick, vital current of self-awareness by a natural storyteller who uses literary styles and devices with a deft hand. From the first terror of being dangled over a cliff by her father, greatly amusing her mother, to her depression and sense of abandonment after the birth of her daughter, Goodwin artfully integrates the disparate sections of her life, emerging whole and healed.
Silver River: A Family Story by Daisy Goodwin | The Sunday TimesSusannah Herbert
September 23, 2007
The very first line of Daisy Goodwin’s family memoir suggests long intimacy with suspense. “ ‘But don’t you want to be famous?’ said Joe as he held me over the cliff.” Goodwin was six, a plump, scowling child with vague aspirations to film stardom. Joe, her new stepfather, was a storybook ogre, her rival for the love of her runaway mother. “What I’m going to do,” he declared, “is drop you here off this cliff and I’m going to film you falling down . . . You might be crippled, but you’d be a crippled film star.”
Goodwin: First Person | Guardian
September 16, 2007
Daisy Goodwin was just five when her mother left their safe, middle-class life for a ‘dirty, rude, sexy’ northern boy called Joe. The effects of her abandonment are still being felt
I don’t remember the day my mother left, but I remember the moment when I noticed she had gone. Someone, not my mother, had left my brother and me alone in the bath with a Lucozade bottle made of glass. I was five and my brother was three so we were soon sitting in a tub of bright red water, crying. Someone, not my mother, came at last and plucked us out of the bath and dried us and put plasters on my wounded knee. The someone may have kissed it better even; I don’t remember, she was not my mother.
Goodwin: “Children of the divorce Olympics stay married” | Sunday Times
September 16, 2007
A victim of the break-up boom of the 1960s, our correspondent says her generation will fight to avoid inflicting such pain again
From the age of six I have lived a double life. Not because I was intrinsically deceitful but because, like 20m other people in this country (according to a survey last week), my life has been profoundly altered by divorce.
Goodwin: “People like fairy stories” | Digital Spy.co.uk ( Joanne Oates)
August 24, 2007
A session on factual entertainment provoked some lively debate at MGEITF this afternoon, discussing the success of shows that try to change people’s behaviour.
Kelvin Mackenzie, former editor of The Sun, said that too many factual entertainment shows that try to do good are bad for a channel.
Speaking at a MGEITF session today – called F’*ck off, I’m a TV God – he said: “They keep making these things and they don’t work, and then it takes over a network.”…
Joining Mackenzie on the panel was Daisy Goodwin, founder and ‘head girl’ of indie Silver River, the company behind many successful factual entertainment shows. She defended the format, pointing to Grand Designs as an example of where a fact-ent show had ‘done some good’. “It has raised people’s awareness of what can be done in architecture in this country, ” she said.
Goodwin said the popularity of using experts in fact-ent shows is because they are like ‘fairy godmothers’. “People like fairy stories and that is what these experts are,” she added.
Goodwin Stops Traffic | Media Guardian.co.uk ( John Plunkett)
August 28, 2007
Having transformed the nation’s attitude to architecture and encouraged us all to get on the property ladder, Daisy Goodwin is about to tackle her toughest challenge yet – traffic congestion. Channel 4’s The Woman Who Stops Traffic will feature her efforts to cut traffic in Marlowe, Buckinghamshire. It is made by Goodwin’s production company, Silver River.
Let’s Facebook, my dear | timesonline.co.uk ( Daisy Goodwin)
July 22, 2007
The scene: Shoreditch House (the new east London members’ club) last weekend; the cast: middle-youthy, middle-class media types; the conversation: “Nice Facebook picture, love the Warhol vibe. How many friends have you got? Only 30? Never mind, it’ll pick up. You know, Ricky Gervais is on it.” Both parties consider this a substitute for actual conversation and edge away to find other “friends”. Everybody at the party is either on it, thinking about joining or is an official refusenik. Even five months ago this wouldn’t have been the case, but the Facebook phenomenon is greasing the wheels of middle-class social life faster than Nigella’s goose fat.
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