Clara’s Verdict
I have sat through a great many celebrity memoirs over the years – many of them disappointingly thin, padded with anecdotes that feel laundered for public consumption. This Much Is True is a different beast entirely. Miriam Margolyes narrating her own life, in her own inimitable voice, is one of those rare audiobook experiences that feels less like listening and more like being cornered at a dinner party by the most entertaining person in the room. You are not going anywhere, and frankly you would not want to.
At over fifteen hours, this is not a slim listen. But the time disappears. Margolyes is funny, brutally candid, and occasionally startling in what she chooses to share. She has, quite simply, lived more than most people manage in three lifetimes – and she recounts it with a wit and directness that makes most audiobooks feel timid by comparison.
About the Audiobook
Running at 15 hours and 7 minutes, This Much Is True is Miriam Margolyes’ autobiography, released by John Murray in September 2021. It begins with her childhood in Oxford – being conceived, as she informs us with characteristic cheerfulness, during an air raid, an event she credits with her curly hair – and moves through a life that has been improbable, often hilarious, and sometimes deeply moving.
You get the stories you might expect: the famous face at Oxford, the early days in theatre, the television work from Blackadder through Call the Midwife, the Harry Potter films. But Margolyes goes much further than the professional highlights reel. She writes honestly about her parents, her relationship with her mother in particular, and about her own sexuality and long partnership with her historian partner Heather. The cast list is indeed dazzling – Scorsese, Streisand, Leonardo DiCaprio, Isaiah Berlin – yet it never feels like name-dropping for its own sake. She is genuinely observant about people, and often more revealing about herself in these encounters than about the famous names.
What distinguishes this from the run of celebrity memoir is the absence of careful image management. Margolyes shares things that most public figures would delegate firmly to the unpublished chapter.
The Narration
Margolyes reads the book herself, and this is not an optional extra – it is the whole point. She has been doing voices for half a century, and her command of pace, emphasis, and character is extraordinary. The text on a page would be funny; spoken in her voice, with its particular mixture of grandeur and earthy irreverence, it is frequently side-splitting. She can veer from a sharply observed anecdote to something genuinely affecting without losing the listener, and there is an energy to her delivery that belies the fact that she recorded this in her eighties.
For 15 hours and 7 minutes, her voice never palls. That is a remarkable achievement, and it makes This Much Is True one of the most compelling author-narrated memoirs I have encountered. Some books are better read; this one is definitively better heard.
What Readers Say
Listeners on Audible have given the audiobook a rating of 4.5 out of 5, and the response is consistently enthusiastic. MacTrish describes it as “funny, poignant, brutal, rude, wholly entertaining” – exactly the range of registers Margolyes operates in. Strachan writes that even without being a particular Margolyes fan beforehand, the memoir is “absolutely fantastic” and “honest to a fault.” Another listener, Kindle Spig, puts it simply: “Love, love, love this woman. So honest and straightforward and very witty and intelligent.” Even the slightly cooler reviews acknowledge the quality of the writing and the breadth of the life it captures.
Who Should Listen?
If you have ever found yourself charmed and slightly alarmed by Margolyes on a chat show, you owe it to yourself to spend fifteen hours in her company. This is for anyone who values honesty over polish in a memoir, who appreciates wit that has been earned by actually living rather than cultivated for effect, and who wants to hear one of Britain’s best character actors bring her own story to life. It works equally well for those who know her work intimately and those coming to her afresh.
This is also a surprisingly moving listen for anyone thinking about ageing, identity, and the question of how one constructs a life without apology. Listen on Audible UK – get your copy here.
