Magnusson Mamie - Where Memories Go: Why dementia changes everything - Now with a new chapter

Touching... There are many moments of heartwarming sentiment. Literary snowdrops grow out of the barren earth... This book is the constant, tenuous but vital reconnection between a child and its mother... A fine book

AA Gill, The Sunday Times

The whole point of this book is that it starts with love. It opens out into medicine, philosophy, reportage from both sides of the Atlantic, but it only is able to be the profoundly moving book it is because it is infused with love to begin with. Books like this are difficult to get right: just a hint of emotional dishonesty, whether self-pity or even lightly veiled self-praise, and they flounder. Theres none of that here, just the opposite: this is a book written with a rare combination of analytical inquiry and intimate, deeply moving memoir

Scotsman

Powerful

Guardian

A wonderful book... Part memoir and part manifesto for how we should treat older people, it had me hooked from the moment I picked it up... It should be compulsory reading for every doctor and nurse, because it reminds us that behind every patient with dementia, there are friends and families who are grieving for the person that we will never know

Max Pemberton, Daily Telegraph

Moving

The Times

Sally Magnusson set out to write a book about dementia and in this she has succeeded wonderfully. But Where Memories Go is also perhaps primarily a book about love... Although this book is full of interesting facts, with forays into laboratories, hospitals and care homes, tenderness is its most striking quality.
It is a description of a terrible disease, but also of redemptive love

Mail on Sunday

It is impressive that a book that can be so clear-eyed in its reporting can often leave the readers eyes brimming... A brave, compassionate, tender and honest portrait of a mother and family that also informs a conversation we all need to be having. I daresay this book will prove to be what Mamie felt so frustrated in her declining years at not being: useful

Metro

A deeply moving, yet ultimately triumphant story of a family coping with the loss of a loved one... Written with extraordinary empathy and tenderness... What stands out most amid the chaos and heartache are not sadness and gloom, but rather the strength of human love and the versatility of the human spirit, as we witness the family bravely coming to terms with their bereavement. A shining example of courage in adversity

The Lady

Moving, funny, warm... a clarion call for change

Mail on Sunday (You Magazine)

A life-changing book... shot through on every page with insights about love, the strength of family life and the enduring human spirit... Where Memories Go is a triumph over the darkness of dementia

Sunday Post

A heartfelt memoir about the love between parents and children

Good Housekeeping

Sally Magnussons new book, radiating artistry and integrity, is an inspiring and extraordinarily gripping testament to a mother with dementia and to the enduring grace of love

WI Life

A heart rending and touching portrait... incredibly moving

Psychologies

Beautifully written and honest

Candis Magazine

This is an extraordinarily moving memoir which is, at the same time, a fascinating exploration of a condition that touches virtually every family. This book will help our understanding

Alexander McCall Smith

I was bowled over by this book. Intensely moving and inspiring, it is as much about living, laughing and family life as it is about loss and death. I read it in one sitting and thought about it again and again

Joanna Lumley, actress and activist

A brave story of a familys love for their mother, told with affection, steadfastness and humour and a cool-headed battle-cry to do more and better

Sarah Brown, global campaigner for Health and Education

Never has the subject of dementia been dealt with so movingly and with such penetrating intelligence. Sally Magnusson writes with the deep love of a daughter, and the calm professionalism of a journalist. The result is a work of genuine significance, that brings understanding and analysis to an affliction that thousands of families must face in the years ahead. A beautiful and important book

Magnus Linklater, Times columnist, Scottish commentator and former editor of the Scotsman

I was in tears on the very first page

Kirsty Wark, BBC broadcaster

The story of remarkable women from a remarkable family living through the journey of dementia. At times funny and heartening, and at times desperately sad, it is an inspiration to others who will walk this path. All who work in the field need to read this and reflect on what we can do to improve on the services we currently provide

Dr June Andrews, director of the Dementia Services Development Centre, Stirling University

A wonderful book

Dr Frank Gunn-Moore, molecular neurobiologist

A lovely book so intimate and truthful, painful and joyous

Liz Lochhead, National Poet for Scotland

This is simply beautiful, honest, piercingly intelligent, page-turning and written from the heart. A stunning piece of writing and experience

Alistair Moffat, author, broadcaster and book festival director

A remarkable and courageous book which will have immense positive benefits for many different people those who care, those who are entering the long walk into the gloaming, and those who are responsible for making and implementing policy. Mostly dementia does not alight simply on one person: its eddies can encompass a whole family. This book tells one such story in an exquisite, but sometimes painful way

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, philosopher, former chair of the Royal Commission on Long-Term Care of Older People and President of Alzheimer Scotland

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Two Roads

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright Sally Magnusson 2014

The right of Sally Magnusson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 444 75180 2

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

For Anna Lisa, Calum, Ellie, Jamie, Louis, Magnus, Robbie, Rossie and Siggy.

To replenish your own memories.

To a steigh brae, a stubborn back Addressin daily; An up the rude, unbieldy track O life, gang gaily.

Robert Louis Stevenson,

The Counterblast, 1886

Contents Preface

This is a book about the life of my mother, the writer and raconteur Mamie Baird Magnusson, and the way dementia changed it for her and for everyone who loved her.

It is also a book about dementia itself, and how society regards the most fragile of its citizens, and how urgently this needs to change.

Mamie was never famous in the way her husband Magnus became, when he found himself in the living rooms of the land for twenty-five years as the stern interrogator on the BBC quiz game Mastermind . She came not from saga-steeped Reykjavk and a douce Edinburgh villa, as he did, but from the poor tenements of a small industrial town on the edge of Glasgow, where she developed the keen eye and light, humorous writing style that would make her what the great Daily Express editor Arthur Christiansen was to describe as a very fine journalist indeed.

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