A number one bestseller in Britain, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde , which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action .          Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar , and now he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction and imprisonment to emerge, at the age of eighteen, ready to start over in a world in which he had always felt a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry is a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy and real devotion. Praise for Moab Is My Washpot "Fry is a master of provocative tangents and he remembers with a cheeky wit . . . Delicious." — The New Yorker "An engagingly rueful memoir . . . Enormously entertaining." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review "This book bubbles; it boils and it bubbles with wonderful language, quick wit, and loopy digression . . . [Fry's] voice is delightfully irreverent, cozy, smart, funny and insightfully honest . . . A great read!" —Spalding Gray “Stephen Fry is one of the great originals . . . That so much outward charm, self awareness and intellect should exist alongside behaviour that threatened to ruin the lives of the innocent victims, noble parents and Fry himself, gives the book a tragic grandeur that lifts it to classic status.” — Financial Times "Fry, well known for his television roles in the British comedies Jeeves and Wooster and Blackadder, continues to entertain in this fresh and hilarious boyhood memoir . . . His hindsight provides witty entertainment in this gay coming-of-age story that will delight readers . . . With this daring and feisty story, Fry will delight fans and nonfans." — Booklist "The engaging Mr. Fry admits to lies, thievery, homosexuality, excessive cleverness, and other peccadilloes in this boarding-school adventure . . . An author in the long and honorable tradition of English Eccentrics, Theatrical Division, presents his coming-of-age story. With all the wit and Pythonesque antics, his book will entertain the Masterpiece Theatre crowd and others as well." — Kirkus Reviews Stephen Fry is an actor, producer, director, and writer who has appeared in numerous TV series and movies, including Jeeves and Wooster , Wilde , Gosford Park , V for Vendetta and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug . He is the bestselling author of four novels and several works of nonfiction. He divides his time between New York and the UK. Chapter 1 Joining In “Look, Marguerite . . . England!” Closing lines of The Scarlet Pimpernel , 1934 For some reason I recall it as just me and Bunce. No one else in the compartment at all. Just me, eight years and a month old, and this inexpressibly small dab of misery who told me in one hot, husky breath that his name was Samuelanthonyfarlowebunce.         I remember why we were alone now. My mother had dropped us off early at Paddington Station. My second term. The train to Stroud had a whole carriage reserved for us. Usually by the time my mother, brother and I had arrived on the platform there would have been a great bobbing of boaters dipping careless farewells into a sea of entirely unacceptable maternal hats.        Amongst the first to arrive this time, my brother had found a compartment where an older boy already sat amongst his opened tuck-box, ready to show off his pencil cases and conker skewers while I had moved respectfully forward to leave them to it. I was still only a term old after all. Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure what a conker skewer might be.        The next compartment contained what appeared to be a tiny trembling woodland creature.        My brother and I had leaned from our respective windows to send the mother cheerfully on her way. We tended to be cruelly kind at these moments, taking as careless and casual a leave of her as possible and making a great show of how little it mattered that we were leaving home for such great stretches of time. Some part of us must have known inside that it was harder for her than it was for us. She would be returning to a baby and a husband who worked so hard that she hardly saw him and to all the nightmares of uncertainty, doubt and guilt which plague a parent, while we would be amongst our own. I think it was a tacitly agreed strategy to arrive early so that all this could be got over with without too many others milling around. Th