(BEWARE OF SPOILERS!)



Review by Tony Kendrew (former Sunday Times Reviewer)

The second volume of Anneke's autobiography continues the same remarkable adventure of her life in the same delightfully fresh and self-effacing prose we enjoyed in Self Portrait. While the first book reflects on the social whirlwind of the swinging sixties, the second book takes us into deeper territory. Anneke dares to follow the questionings of her restless soul and where they take her is described with honesty and humour. Naked is not the calm after the youthful storm of Self Portrait. On the contrary, the intensity of tragedy and comedy only seems to increase, with life ratcheting it up until we feel like crying "Enough, enough!". Happily we are spared the 'poor me' approach and are astonished at Anneke's resilience and her ability to bounce back and delight in whatever life throws her way. May we all be as natural, open and honest.

Review by Simon Guerrier (Doctor Who writer)

Naked picks up with Anneke now 30, stuck in a one-sided marriage in a nice house in Norfolk, with her two young kids. As before, it’s a breathless, wide-eyed account of events, even the worst of it told with little bitterness. At the end, she describes writing the thing as “a meditation in letting go.” There’s an awful lot to be rid of: the callous way her husband (actor Michael Gough) only gets close to her just before he leaves for good. There’s the more and more common deaths of loved ones, most especially the shock of her daughter, Polly, being killed in a car crash. And there’s her decades-long following of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, where, as “Anita” or “Neet”, she seems to have spent her time wearing red and orange and doing the most menial jobs.

This spiritualist stuff takes up a lot of the book – Bhagwan’s teachings, the advice of ghosts, the drugs and song lyrics of the time. Simon, I thought: it’s going to be a hippy ex-actress wittering on about crystals for 30 years. But Anneke’s abrupt honesty about her own experiences are often fascinating. We get her fears and her contradictions – for all the humility imposed by Bhagwan’s teaching she’s still very much into her groovy clothes, while the free love enjoyed by her fellas leaves her raging and insecure. Then there are her observations about the burgeoning power politics around her cult leader. In the US, for example, this man of peace is surrounded by guards with machine guns. There’s a bullying cook who keeps Champagne and chocolates to herself, and the horror amongst devotees when Anneke’s boyfriend wears colours of the wrong rank. For all these people are apparently seeking to transcend the crude matter of being, they are bound by the mundane. Funny how this quest to be more of an “individual” means conforming to the same clothes and rituals. There’s the same gossip, infighting and scandal as any community. While Anneke is often surrounded by like-minded, hippy friends, a lot of her relationships seem hard work. She admits she’s attracted to difficult men, and her main loves all leave her for younger women. She’s on good terms with her son and on better terms with her mother than in the first volume, though it’s difficult to share her empathy for the pain felt by her ex-husband and the father who left her when she was a child. For all her spiritual retreats and courses and reading, Anneke is still bent under a great burden of guilt. She is not quite the free spirit she claims. There’s a constant sense of yearning as she travels round the world, as if she’s struggling to escape from under this terrible weight. The death of her daughter comes at just the moment she seems to be sorting things out for herself, and the grief casts an awfully long shadow.

Of course, the book has a lot for Doctor Who fans, though Anneke’s time in the series was dealt with in volume one. The series crops up at regular intervals, for the most part when she’s surprised to be recognised for the part she played so long ago. Then she’s “rediscovered” by the fan community in the early 1990s and describes the excitement and generosity of conventions. She’s got notes to give on each of the Doctors – including Eccleston’s performance onscreen, as he's the only one she’s not met. For the rest, its tiny insights into them as actors, real people. There’s climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge with Colin Baker, a drunk Sylvester McCoy playing the spoons against a bouncer, and her response to Paul McGann.
It’s a bit weird to hear her natter about mutual friends (especially in the same paragraph as she mentions Jim Broadbent), and even events I was at myself. But this isn’t a book about “us”, the fans. Nor is about the famous people Anneke has met. It’s about her coming to terms with herself. Especially at the end I found myself reading between the lines: for “independent” you might read “difficult”; for “single-minded”, “pain in the arse”. I cringed when at a convention she rants about a first draft of a script while its author (one of my chums) is in the audience. For all the peace-and-love stuff, that's the kind of thing that'd make me want to curl up and die. But the appeal of the book is its matter-of-fact honesty, and she's unflinching about all she's done. There’s her periods and pooping, drugs and experimental sex mixed in with thoughts on music and films. It proclaims, “This is me; this is all I am. You can think what you like.” And it’s that, ultimately, that makes Anneke’s life story such a joy.

Review by PJ Wood (Amazon) 

If like me you were left on tenterhooks at the end of Self Portrait - the first volume of Anneke Wills' biography - then the publication of Naked was long-awaited. Picking up when the first volume left off with the whole family upping sticks and moving to Norfolk, the conversational style which made the original so hard to put down continues. Country life though is just as unpredictable and as complex even far removed from the Swinging Sixties London, which was one of the draws of Self Portrait. Trying to find her way through her marriage and find some peace in her life Anneke leads you through her quite invigorating journey of self-discovery. I felt quite astonished at the bravery of this woman who never gives up. Keeps on moving forward, whether she's alone, living as a hermit on the other side of the planet from her friends and children. Or in various communities of similar-minded individuals.

Like the first volume she shares with you her frustration with some of the people in her life. How can they treat someone like that? But she doesn't overly dwell on these experiences and just tells her stories and carries on. Even through some horrendus heartbreaks she now conveys a sense of calm acceptance which quite moved me. Devestating though they are. She's come to terms with them and let them shape her life in a positive way. Anneke's vitality, wit and determination continue to shine through and I had much the same conundrum as reading Self Portrait. I stopped reading for a while because I didn't want there to be nothing more to read. Of course eventually I had to accept that sitting experiencing her discoveries, tragedies and comedies should end in her own way.

For the Who fans, the familiar names return near the end of the book. Whether they be actors or some of the "fan glitterati". Bemused at first, Anneke of course takes it all in her stride. Tom Baker said of the first volume and its author "A brave person and a brave book." The second book is just as brave.  The sixties pop-culture is replaced with a journey of self-discovery that is making me look at my own life in a new light.  I suspect shortly this will be as difficult to get hold of as Self-Portrait. So grab it while you can folks, because if you've read volume one, (and if not why not?) you won't want to miss this.

Review by Paul Castle (Doctor Who fan)

The natural reaction to a second volume of someone’s autobiography is to ask whether it’s warranted, surely no-one’s story is worth two books? Thing is, with Anneke it’s very much a case of her cramming half a dozen lives into one lifetime, so fitting it all into just the two volumes is quite a feat! The first volume, Self Portrait, charted her family history, childhood, and early years as an actress, before her work on Doctor Who, Strange Report and other programmes. The most interesting part of this first book was her life beyond the cameras, so anyone who was left dangling at the end wondering what this amazing person did with her life after retiring from acting is sure to grab Naked as soon as it becomes available. The story takes up where it left off, with Anneke living a real life version of The Good Life in Norfolk, growing vegetables, keeping goats, and developing her talent as an artist and interior decorator. Not all is chocolate boxes and roses though, as her husband Michael Gough is constantly away with his acting and frequently distant (or downright cheating) whenever at home. A faithful wife and mother, Anneke yearns for love as a person in her own right, and no amount of transference activity can make her truly whole.

An opportunity arises, and Anneke goes travelling in the Far East. She learns a lot about herself as she encounters other cultures and philosophies, and becomes involved in the life of spiritual leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, spending years travelling the world as a valued disciple. Never one to be tied down though, when it’s time to move on, Anneke does. She lives a life amongst a community of artists on a small Canadian island, finds work in California as a designer and gardener, and rediscovers the world of Doctor Who whilst living in Vancouver in 1996. It’s this that brings her into the world of fandom, and because of that there’s a great deal more Doctor Who coverage here than in the first volume, when she was actually working on the show. Anneke discovers the joys of conventions, befriending fellow Who glitterati, becoming involved with Big Finish productions and BBC audiobooks, and meeting David Tennant as an honoured guest on set!

Anneke’s second book I have to say had a profound effect on me. Written with love, honesty, and total frankness, you don’t just read about her life, you experience it. It made me question my own life, not so much in the sense of making me drop everything and rush off to India, but more in the way I view possessions and relationships with my friends: it’s not what you clutter your life up with that’s important, but how you are with other people and how you regard yourself. Both these volumes paint a picture of a life that’s suffered tragedy beyond my capacity to imagine, and joy that’s conveyed without any need for rose-tinted spectacles. Anneke Wills is a person whose life is very much her own, and whilst not all her choices have been right for her, it’s made her the wonderful person we know and love today.