The Telegraph
Douglas Thompson’s jaunty biography, Inside Out, opens with a bang: “April Ashley was born, aged 25, on 12 May 1960.” She’d previously been born as George Jamieson on 29 April 1935 in Liverpool, the fourth of six children, among whom she had a rotten time. Her mother hated her, and liked nothing better than picking her up by the ankles and banging her head on the ground. Her father Frederick loved her, albeit “in a maudlin, drink-sodden way”, and he was anyway absent most of the time working as