My Animals and Other Family

If you don't know who Clare Balding is you've probably been locked in a dungeon without access to TV or radio, as she is at the forefront of BBC sports coverage and TV and radio broadcasting this year. Brought up in an unusual household (her father being a champion racehorse trainer), she and her younger brother spent their childhood among horses, ponies and foals, as well as an ever-present pack of lurchers and boxers, and came very low down the pecking order. In this moving, skilfully written and very funny childhood memoir, Clare Balding describes her journey to self-discovery in a family who's running joke was, 'women ain't people.'