‘April Ashley was born, aged twenty-five, on 12 May 1960. It was a difficult birth at the Clinique du Parc on rue Lapébie, a back street running parallel to the admired avenue d’Amade in Casablanca, on a day when the Moroccan sunshine was behaving the way the guidebooks say it should . . .’

Through her own – often bloody-minded – determination and the medical skill of others, April Ashley became the woman she had always believed herself to be.

And for half a dozen decades she soared around, over and above momentous and turbulent times, difficult, and changing times when, finally, who you wanted to be and who you could be became the cultural topic of the day.

She overcame opprobrium and penury and became renowned and celebrated for one specific achievement: being April Ashley.

This raw, moving and funny memoir reveals April’s life as never before.