It is nearly sixty years since Margolyes’s first radio job with the BBC Drama Repertory Company, and her career shows no sign of slowing down. Eight months of lockdown in Tuscany in 2020 finally gave Margolyes a hiatus from performance work and the chance to write this memoir. Told in chronological order with the exactitude of a keen genealogist and the panache of a veteran entertainer, it is a candid account of the unlikely theatrical success of a ‘short, fat, Jewish girl with no neck’. It includes a repertoire of anecdotes, complete with punchlines, familiar to anyone who has seen her guest appearances on The Graham Norton Show.

The memoir starts soberly, as Margolyes records her early years as the only child of Jewish parents, one conceived during the London Blitz. Her father, a doctor, was born in the Gorbals, the Glasgow slum. Her English mother, an outspoken social climber who shocked the au pair girls by vacuuming in the nude, was the dominant parent and a prototype for Miriam. She dedicated herself to obtaining the best education for her daughter, as a way for the family to join the intellectual and social élite of Oxford and for Miriam to be able to talk to anybody about anything. Mission accomplished. Margolyes recounts her formative years at Oxford High School as the class clown; she spares us none of the trivia, embarrassment, and ‘pulverising experience’ of adolescence. But school also provided this budding entertainer with the perfect audience. Her days were spent making people laugh, and on the daily journey home she would invent plays and voice all the characters.

Mrs Margolyes used her husband’s connections through his patients to secure a sponsor for Miriam’s application to study at Oxbridge. Isaiah Berlin, the eminent intellectual, was duly invited to dinner, given the facts, and handed the sponsorship form to sign. Both Oxford and Cambridge offered Miriam a place. She opted for an Exhibition scholarship at Newnham College, Cambridge. There she made lifelong friends and, in pursuit of her childhood dream, put acting at the centre of her world.

In 1962, she performed with the famous Footlights club, but she did not conform to their usual ‘dolly bird’ requirements. Margolyes was enlisted for her comedy skills, but most of the men cut her dead as soon as they were off-stage. It was a hurtful experience, but she was not alone in being given a cool reception. Clive James was also suspect, coming from Australia, but his brilliance and refusal to be cowed won them over. Stephen Fry became her close friend.

Margolyes loves and hates with equal passion. She is not afraid to name and shame those who behave badly, including Arnold Schwarzenegger (‘What a pig of a man!’). It is unusual to read such frank exposure, although she turns the candid camera on her own exploits just as readily. Honesty and a sense of justice prevail.

Margolyes graduated with a Lower Second Class BA, which she wryly refers to as ‘the actor’s degree’. From here on, Margolyes took her destiny into her own hands. With no drama school training, the route was somewhat circuitous, via selling encyclopedias and modelling nude for Augustus John. Finally, she auditioned for the BBC Drama Repertory Company, creating a spontaneous cast of characters and startling the producers with her range of voices and accents. She had the ability to replicate the myriad British accents that indicate geography, time, and class. Before long, she was taking part in four or five radio drama productions each week. ‘Radio is a particular world and I belong there. The great, glory days have gone … These voices are part of my youth and it is a source of high delight to me to think I follow in their footsteps, in their “voicesteps”.’ She considers her early work in radio her best work. The first version of her one-woman show, Dickens’ Women, making use of her study of Charles Dickens at Cambridge, was recorded for Radio 4. This show went on to tour the world, including Australia, in 2012. Heather, her partner of fifty-three years, was born here, and Margolyes is now an Australian citizen.

Voice-over work promised a lucrative sideline. Sexy voices were her speciality, and she helpfully gives us the YouTube link to the Manikin Cigars advertisements where her crisp RP (received pronunciation) tones have undergone an astonishing transformation. As her career in theatre and film progressed, she was called on to perform most of the supporting female characters in the dubbed TV series Monkey in 1978. Her favourite voice of all was for the film Babe (1995), in which she played the mother dog, Fly.

Margolyes loves an audience and has worked widely in theatre, but film does not have the same appeal. Jeremy Irons took her aside on the set of Being Julia (2004) and gave her advice about holding back and reserving her energy for the close-ups. ‘I would love to be enigmatic,’ says Margolyes wistfully. But she is resigned to being an ‘over-actress’.

This Much Is True, which includes photographs and an index and introduces us to luminaries of radio, theatre, and film, has historical value but is also a candid and comprehensive account of an extraordinary life. Although she credits her two editors with guiding her through the process of writing, Margolyes’s decades as a storyteller shine through in the clarion prose. Her voice is unmistakable.