At Freddie's, Paperback/Penelope Fitzgerald

"A jewel of a book." -- Daily Mail It is the 1960s, in London's West End, and Freddie is the formidable proprietress of the Temple Stage School, which supplies child actors for everything from Shakespeare to musicals to the Christmas pantomime. Of unknown age and provenance, Freddie is a skirt-swathed enigma--a woman who by sheer force of character and single-minded thrust has turned herself and her school into a national institution. Anyone who is anyone must know Freddie. Filled with unique and hilarious insights into the theatrical world, At Freddie's is a beguiling story for those of us who sometimes pretend to be something we are not. "Love, fear, class, ambition, even death--it's all in here, but so elegantly presented that you've finished your plate before you even think to ask about the ingredients." --National Public Radio