Published by Doubleday
We know her as the Queen of Shops, the hard-hitting, tough-talking red-head troubleshooter who helps struggling retailers turn their businesses around.
This memoir of her early life growing up one of five siblings in a big Irish family in a semi-detached in Watford shows just where she gained her hard-working ethos. Her happy childhood, the harmless mischief she and her siblings made, the memories of Crackerjack, introduction to Vesta curry, Chopper bikes, and later the Sex Pistols and Pernod and black, are all relayed with a wonderful nod to the Seventies.
But at 16, Mary’s happy family unit is torn apart when her mother dies suddenly from meningitis and from thereon it’s clear life will never be the same again.
Her father can’t cope and goes off with another woman, leaving Mary to look after her younger brother Lawrence, living hand-to-mouth, relying on the kindness of relatives to take her in when her father sells the house and remarries.
It’s heart-breaking stuff, as Mary, who had wanted to follow her first love of acting, turns down a place at Rada so she can take care of Lawrence and ends up going to college and entering the world of window dressing, in Harvey Nicholls and Harrods, while her relationship with her father continues to deteriorate.
This book may chart Portas’ life but it is also a homage to her mother, the lynchpin of the family, who held her whole childhood and much of her adolescence together.
It ends as Mary quits her job at Harrods for a bigger, wider world. Humorous and heart-rending in equal measure, it begs a sequel, because her life beyond this chapter has been a brilliantly colourful one.