One of the most poignant, funny, intelligent, frank and horribly addictive books you're likely to read all year

A remarkable, perhaps even unique, exercise in autobiography ... that aroma of authenticity that is the point of all great autobiographies: of which his, I rather think, is one

Stephen Fry is one of the great originals ... This autobiography of his first twenty years is a pleasure to read, mixing outrageous acts with sensible opinions in bewildering confusion ... That so much outward charm, self-awareness and intellect should exist alongside behaviour that threatened to ruin the lives of innocent victims, noble parents and Fry himself, gives the book a tragic grandeur and lifts it to classic status

He writes superbly about his family, about his homosexuality, about the agonies of childhood ... some of his bursts of simile take the breath away ... his most satisfying and appealing book so far

This is one of the most extraordinary and affecting biographies I have read . . . Stephen is . . . painfully honest when trying to grapple with his ever-present demons, and often, as you might expect, very funny

The writing is rhapsodic, intoxicated and very touching

[A] wonderful, self-lacerating autobiography

He has produced a remarkable autobiography . . . It makes gripping, sometimes unbearably sad, sometimes confusing reading . . . exhilarating, humane, zany, literary

No one can make you feel quite like Stephen Fry can . . . Funny and tormentedly frank

Hugely enjoyable . . . compulsively readable . . . Fry is excellent on the details of memory, too, and always able to embellish them with effortless erudition . . . this engaging, engrossing read is as honest a portrait of a young liar as one could hope to read

He is bubbly, funny and charming, and he gives his fans plenty of material if they want to speculate on why he is both so gifted and so wayward

The jokes . . . transcend the complexes of the joker, turning the Stephenesque into a national as well as a family treasure

Not so much an autobiography, more a way of life; discursive, funny, sometimes almost unbelievably sad, opinionated, nostalgic and very infectious

Fry can be funny about anything

So charming and so acute that one cannot help forgiving him