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 PENELOPE FITZGERALD (1916 2000) was one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in British fiction. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction for The Blue Flower, the Booker Prize for Offshore, and three of her novels The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, and The Beginning of Spring were short-listed for the Booker Prize. "