Tom Courtenay was born in Hull in 1937 and brought up near the fish dock where all his family had worked for generations. They were poor but both his parents were determined that Tom would have the opportunities that they hadn't had. Tom and his mother, Annie, were very close. Tom attended the grammar school and from there was accepted to read English at University College London. He really wanted to be an actor, so he chose to attend UCL because someone told him it was in the same street as RADA, and if he was in close proximity, who knew what might happen.
From the time he left Hull, Annie wrote to him every week. And from Tom's third year at university, when his mother's letters became more searching and more intimate in response to his unhappiness, Tom kept every letter. Tom has selected the best of them for this book, and interwoven with them a portrait of what was going on in his life at the time, in the heady days of the early sixties when successful young working-class actors were coming to the fore for the first time. Annie's letters are astonishing - wise, funny, with a natural instinct for words, but also deeply faithful.
Partly a memoir of a working-class way of life that has gone forever, partly a powerfully moving record of the relationship between a mother and a son, partly a portrait of the artist as a young actor, 'Dear Tom' will excite admiration and delight in equal measure.
