Taboo

I Know This Much – by Gary Kemp, Spandau Ballet’s prime mover – is simply the freshest, most exciting and best-written memoir to arrive for years.

Gary’s story begins in North London, where the Kemp family rented a home with no bathrooms and chickens in the yard. After a couple of failed attempts to kill his brother Martin, his parents gave him a guitar for Christmas.

From schoolyard battles between the Bowie Boys and the Prog Rockers to Mrs Kemp’s firm insistence on net curtains, from acting for the Children’s Film Foundation to manning a fruit and veg stall on Saturdays, Gary brilliantly evokes an upbringing full of love, creativity and optimism.

As the Thatcher years begin, Gary’s account of the outrageous London club scene centred around the Blitz and Billy’s is just sizzling. Out of this glamorous mayhem of kilt-wearing mascara’d peacocks would emerge Spandau Ballet – the band that would define the era, and hold high the victorious standard of the New Romantics.

Evander Holyfield is history’s only four-time world heavyweight boxing champion. But this is most admired and beloved athlete did not have an easy journey to the top. Barely able to make it into the heavyweight division and almost always smaller fighter in the ring, Holyfield spent his professional career proving the naysayers wrong.