Public Places
Siân Phillips
Read by the author
Running time 3hrs
Hodder Headline £8.99

When an actress decides to air her washing in public, it's no good just hanging out the sexiest undies. Unlike many autobiographers before her, Siân Phillips does no such thing. In this, the second half of her life story, she achieves an enviable degree of naturalness and lack of self-consciousness.

Phillips's memoirs pick up at the start of her relationship with Peter O'Toole. Both are theatre actors, both attempting to build their careers. He is a drinker, a passionate man who likes to live on the edge. She has already been married before, and neither is keen to tie the knot. Instead, defying convention, they simply decide to have a child. When they do marry, just before their daughter Kate's birth, Phillips finds she has entered into a destructive relationship. Her new husband is 'savagely critical' of her. After giving birth, she comments: 'Producing a baby does nothing to improve my status at home.' Throughout their rollercoaster marriage, she remains loyal to the man she refers to as O'Toole, and although she loses faith in herself, the listener never loses faith in her.

When the marriage does come to an end, 20 years later, there is no bitterness. Phillips marries again (to Robin Sachs) and devotes less than a side of the audiobook to their 16-year marriage. At the end of Public Places , she says: 'There is no solution, no resolution, no conclusion.' One hopes not - I'm looking forward to a third instalment.