The Portico Library is delighted to welcome Melanie Sykes to launch her new book from HarperNorth, Illuminated: Autism & All The Things I’ve left Unsaid. Melanie will be in conversation with presenter and avid book reader Simon Savidge. Books will be on sale.

Melanie Sykes has been a face on our screens, a voice on our radios for nearly thirty years. As a presenter and broadcaster people turned to her for her humour, her honesty and insight. But between all the interviews and chat shows, is a life unseen, a story unsaid.

Her journey – from up north to down south, from Manchester to LA and via London, Paris and India, and through the eye of the storm of celebrity culture is a rollercoaster ride. Sex, drugs and rock and roll, certainly, but also brass bands and ice cream vans, broken hearts and healing adventures – a search not for fame but for freedom.

Her autism diagnosis in midlife has supercharged that journey – and means this isn’t a story just of breakdown, but of breakthrough. Funny, furious and gloriously frank, this is a book that lifts the lid on being a woman in the media, the mother of autistic children, and a neurodivergent person speaking up in a neurotypical world. Illuminated is Melanie, in her own inimitable voice, sharing the dark and the light sides of her life, and how all of us can find that balance too.