There is a new breed of traveller focused on uncovering family narratives, as evidenced by the 1,500 visitors who visit the Family History Library every day. Run by the Mormon Church, it contains more than two billion names of the deceased, more than 2.2 million rolls of microfilm and 300,000 books.

Utah is not the only place focused on roots tourism. The newly opened £8.2 million Cumbria Archive Centre in England’s northwest, with records dating back to the 12th Century, is banking on the boom. The fact that Cumbria is home to relatives of three former US presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson fuels interest among genealogy tourists there.

source: bbc.com

The chapter headings – “My Mission”; “Learning to Lead”; “My Rules for Success” – leave us in no doubt that this is a memoir told from the perspective of Brady the businesswoman. Born in Edmonton, north London, her father was a self-made millionaire, and Brady went to convent boarding school, followed by another boarding school where there were six girls to 600 boys – which, with my cod psychology hat on, seems apt preparation for Brady’s male-dominated working life. Indeed, other women barely get a look-in, though this could just be a reflection of the business circles Brady moves in.

Certainly she gives short shrift to the question that’s clearly been the bane of her working existence: how could she stand up for women’s rights (which she does at length in this book) but work so closely with people with interests in the porn business (Sullivan, Gold and Richard Desmond)? It isn’t the stupidest question in the world, and Brady’s response isn’t the strongest – just some mumbling about organisations such as Sky having adult channels too.

Nor does Brady fully address her arrest as part of an investigation into football corruption in 2008. (Brady was released without charge, so why the edit?) Similarly, a modicum of self-awareness could have stopped her going on so long about her ongoing and rather yawnsome battle to win the Olympic stadium for West Ham.

Brady’s prose verges on monotonous “business android” rather too frequently, but she’s gripping and often funny on such matters as being “first lady of football” at Birmingham City, and dealing with the hardboiled sexism she encountered on a daily basis. When a player yelled: “I can see your tits from here”, she replied: “When I sell you to Crewe, you won’t be able to see from there.” (And she did!)

Elsewhere, it’s admirable of Brady to admit that she was wrong to take only three days off after the birth of her first child because she felt fearful about her career. These days she feels that “having it all” is a ridiculous “pressurising concept” that does women no favours. Go Karren! Let’s just hope that the female Apprentice contestants are listening.

Brady’s account of her brain aneurysm is frank without being self-pitying. It’s as if the corporate mask slips and Brady the human being tentatively appears. “I might have looked strong but I found my fear quite difficult to deal with,” she says. When being driven home very slowly after surgery people were tooting rudely at the car: “I wanted to shout out of the window: ‘I’ve just had brain surgery, you twats!’”

I enjoyed these glimpses into her personality much more than all the business stuff. Strong Woman seems to be Brady’s attempt at a female business bible, in the mould of bestsellers from Sugar and Richard Branson. Fair enough. However, there are enough hints here that there may be a much more complex Karren Brady still waiting to come out.

As we follow a troupe of actors touring a geriatric sex comedy (winkingly called Nothing On) through flyblown regional theatres, observing from a variety of angles as the on-stage action is overwhelmed by real-life pratfalls, it becomes less a voyage of dramatic discovery than a penitential progress. It’s genuinely hard to work out if the play is a tribute to thespians keeping calm and carrying on (or off), or a forensic dissection of the limitations of theatre.

Lindsay Posner’s production is a feat of technical brilliance that hasn’t sagged in the least since I saw it three and a half months ago, but neither (despite two new cast members) has it much changed: finely tuned, superbly crafted, but a thing of mechanical precision rather than wild laughter. It’s at its most rewarding in the second act, a ballet of backstage chaos whose astonishing intricacy – a blur of errant props, mistimed cues and acts of silent revenge – would not have disgraced Merce Cunningham.

The cast remains uneven. Robert Glenister seems to have reached the end of the road as the vulpine, bullying director, and Jamie Glover, not a natural comedian, has yet to discover self-irony as a leading man frustrated in love. But Lucy Briggs-Owen (taking over from Amy Nuttall) offers doe-eyed pathos as the female lead whose attention span is as unreliable as her contact lenses, while Celia Imrie’s tragicomic charwoman has, if anything, become more absorbing to watch: a glorious confection of precarious ego and incipient dementia. When she cries out, “I leave the sardines?” she somehow gives the line a riddling philosophical resonance worthy of Beckett.

source: guardian.co.uk