Hello my name is David Ronson and this is Talking Politics. Today I'm joined by Tara Westover

who's the author of this year's Must Read Book. I think it's probably a must read book

for any year. It's called Educated and it is the story of how someone brought up by a

survivalist family in Idaho who never went to school, had no formal education, ended up

ten years later with a Cambridge PhD. Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership

with the London Review of Books, Europe's leading magazine of books and ideas. We've already

had some LRB writers on this podcast and we'll have some more soon. There's a reading list

of pieces to accompany the podcast at lrb.co.uk forward slash talking along with a special

subscription offer for Talking Politics listeners. Twelve issues of fearless, expansive,

elegant writing for just 12 pounds. So I should probably declare a bit of an interest

here when I say Tara came to Cambridge as a PhD, she did do it with me. I was her supervisor

and I have a very small walk on part in the book. These are not the most exciting bits

of the book but it's not, I'm not saying this is a must read because I'm in it, I'm saying

it because it is an amazing book and I'm just going to read a little bit of the Sunday

Times Review. It is the story of a young woman who showed the most remarkable resilience

in the face of extreme poverty, rigid religious beliefs, violence and family betrayals. It

is a beautifully written account of how she grasps the sheer enormity of the world

and struggles to find her own place within it. The result is a memoir that is fit to stand

alongside the classics. So it's a really good book. They were nice to me. It's about

everything. It's about all sorts of things. We're not called talking all sorts of things

or maybe we should be, we're called talking politics and it is in part a book about

different political outlooks and also it's about your journey through very very different

...