Helen Mirren has been an internationally ac-claimed actress - and the recipient of many awards, transferring between stage, cinema and television - for over 40 years. Known in her youth for a forthright style, a liberated attitude and a bohemian outlook, she has never ceased to be out of the public eye, with legions of admiring fans all over the world. This illustrated memoir is an account of an extraordinary talent, and a life well lived. Helen"s aristocratic Russian grandfather, Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, a military man, was sent to London by the Czar and found himself stranded and penniless by the Bolshevik revolution, cut off from the family estate near Smolensk. He brought with him a trunk of papers and photographs. This delightful memoir starts with the contents of the trunk, with evocative pictures of Helen"s Russian antecedents. She has kept a rich seam of photo-graphs and memorabilia from her life, and her parents, family life, childhood, teenage and early years...