Looked at one way, it is faintly ludicrous that Sir David Frost should be writing his autobiography already. That he should have written just the first 30 years’’ worth might be thought strange. Here he is, not yet 55 years old, producing a volume of 520 pages that takes us no further than 1969. It is, true, the period of his life that established his name and fortune, that swift rise from undergraduate cabaret turn to star host on both sides of the Atlantic, joint founder of an ambitious ITV company and long since able to invite show business stars, business tycoons and a British Prime Minister to breakfast at three days’’ notice. (An recalled in his book with such empty difference that you cannot decide whether the comprehensive name-dropping is intended to impress or just a habit.) And yet David Frost, a significant figure in British television, certainly in the rapidly changing environment of the 1960’’s, remains something of a mystery. Never far from positions of influence, wealthier from his broad casting activities than all but the biggest moguls (重要人物), he is in many ways on the edge of things. His book, like his career perhaps, is as fascinating as it is unsatisfactory. The length is due to its liberal resort to programme transcripts, which yield verbatim (照字面的) exchanges with his many interviewees as well as detailed recall of the highs and lows of That Was The Week That Was and the scripting process that achieved them. The private Frost is to be caught only in passing, as he remains true to his preface:" Where there was a choice between a 60s tale and a personal one. I have tried always to include the former. The outcome is, I think, an insider’’s book, dependent on remembering the times or knowing the people. But at that level, it is highly suggestive of its era, offers a view from a unique angle, yields some new insights—into the formation of London Weekend Television, for instance—and earns its place in the history of British television. Like its author. The passage covers David Frost’’s______.