Forward: My Life With and Without Boney M.

Coming to London aged thirteen from desperate poverty in Jamaica; pregnant at fifteen; fifteen years later singing in Boney M, one of the biggest international groups of the late-1970s; a messy group split during the 1980s; a 1990s solo career interrupted by six bouts of cancer - ovarian, breast, lymph node (twice), spine and oesophagus - and having to learn to walk again.

Yet throughout Marcia Barrett has remained totally cheerful, relentlessly optimistic and a shining inspiration, looking...