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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Selina GuinnessClaire Dederer|title=The Crocodile Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by the Door: The Story of a House, a Farm and a FamilyBad People?|rating=53|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Selina Guinness lived at Tibradden as Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a child and ''biography of the audience'' in 2002 she and her husband-to-bea deconstructed, Colin Grahamthoroughly nitpicked, moved back to exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the house when her elderly uncle Charles became frailcontext of contemporary ''cancel culture''. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The surname might lead you to suspect reader gets the impression that there were brewery millions in the background but this wasn't thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the casepage. The couple were young academics In particular, the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and doing what needed to be done at Tibradden would need to be done in addition to full-time jobsyet despises for his actions. The house was on the outskirts This model of Dublin - 'derelict fields' if you were a property developer or monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for the last defence against first few chapters, interrogating the encroaching city if you were notlikes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voice.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844881571</amazonuk>1399715070

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harry Ricketts1788360702|title=Strange MeetingsCharles, The Alternative Prince: The Lives of the Poets of the Great WarAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=4.5

|summary=The majority For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of recent books on the War Poets tend to focus on their lives during alternative medicine and immediately after the conflictcomplementary therapies. This enterprising account''Charles, borrowing its name from The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the poem by Wilfred OwenPrince's opinions, takes a different approach in spanning a full fifty years or more. It begins with beliefs and aims against the first meeting background of Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke at one of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914the scientific evidence. Marsh was a tireless supporter There are few instances of modern painters his beliefs being vindicated and after that promising new writers, particularly poets. The journey, or rather account his relentless promotion of meetings, takes us treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the western front and back to England, culminating in reputation of a reunion man who is proud of two of the longesthis refusal to apply evidence-livedbased, Sassoon and David Jones, in 1964logical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Callow1739805100|title=Charles LaughtonLoving the Enemy: A Difficult ActorBuilding bridges in a time of war|author=Andrew March

|summary=Once a towering presence on stage and screen, ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the star quite extraordinary story of fifty films and forty playsauthor Andrew March's grandparents, Charles Laughton seems largely forgotten these days. As an actor of a younger generation and keen admirer of his work, Callow is well placed who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to bring him back Dresden to the fore. He notes teach in his preface that the man has increasingly slipped out early days of public consciousness, and even within his own profession he is virtually unknown to anybody under the age of forty|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581957</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Sugden|title=Nelson: A Dream of Glory|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=I will admit that I didn't know what I was letting myself Nazi regime in for when I saw 'Nelson: A Dream of Glory' sitting on the Bookbag shelf1930s. Fred, but I had just come back from Portsmouth a sensitive and a wander around on the Victorythoughtful man, so it was a bit hard to resist. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951913</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kate Chisholm|title=Wits and Wives: Dr Johnson in the Company of Women|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=What's your mental image had some vague ideas of a Great Writer? Most people would probably say "building bridges" which may guard against the same thing: someone sitting growing hostilities between nations unfolding in splendid isolation, probably in a garret, writing Great Words and hating themEurope at the time. The idea of Great Writers having friends, or even a family, is a bizarre one. Partly this is because most Great Writers were incredibly weird people. But thereFred's another issue at play. We're simply not used attempts to imagining them in context, just one small part of a large and busy world. Our notion of biography is an incredibly fragmented one: despite the fact that one of the best indications of someoneseparate individual people from ideology weren's character is how they interact with other human beings, we expect biographers to essentially confine themselves to the person t universally successful but he did make friendships and their literary output.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951867</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances A Gerard|title=Anna Amalia, Grand Duchess: Patron of Goethe and Schiller|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Anna Amalia of Brunswick, a Duchess of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach in the eighteenth century, is scarcely little more than a footnote in European royal history these days. Nevertheless it was mainly through her patronage connections that the court of Weimar became one of the most artistically renowned of the time, lasted for a reputation it never lost throughout the increasingly militaristic times that Germany went through from the age of Bismarck and beyondlifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781550166</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adrian FortWill Brooker|title=Nancy: The Story of Lady AstorTruth About Lisa Jewell

|summary=Nancy, Lady AstorMeet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the first woman to take her seat as an elected Member of Parliament at Westminstermost successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, is one of those characters about whom it is surely impossible for anyone to write a dull biographythe thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. A determined character who inspired admirationThis book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, respect and exasperation in equal measure from most if not all who had dealings with shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of heranecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she is well served by this latest was reciting, and her being in a long line ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of titles devoted cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow herthrough a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>022409016X</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julia JonesMartha Leigh|title=Fifty Years In The Fiction FactoryInvisible Ink: The Working Life Of Herbert AllinghamA Family Memoir|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Herbert Allingham was one Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the most prolific authors of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his timelife's work. Between 1886 and his death in 1936 he was Her mother is a busy writer of melodramatic serial stories concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the mass-market halfpenny papers which flourished at the turn practicalities of the centurylife. Yet nothing he wrote was ever published There is love in book form with his name to it, and the magazine proprietors made fortunes while their authors were the unsung heroes of the tradehouse but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1899262075</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter DoggettPolly Barton|title=The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970sFifty Sounds

|genre=EntertainmentPolitics and Society|summary=With hindsightWhere do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, it’s difficult to argue with the oftquestion ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-expressed opinion that David Bowie was the single most important rock musician of the 1970sdown I would have visited by now. Having been a perpetual ‘one to watch’ from around 1966 onwards I may get there later this year, but with only one hit during that decadeI am not hopeful. And like Barton, ‘Space Oddity’, from 1972 onwards he went through several remarkable self-reinventions I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in musical style, with an uncanny knack respect of being able to pre-empt the next big trend. In examining his whole career but focusing largely question in the first essay, which is on his work throughout that particular decadethe sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, Peter Doggett looks specifically at every song he recordedamong other things, including cover versions. There are also boxed-out features on each album, and articles on related topics such as ‘The Art the sound of Minimalism’ and ‘The Heart of Plastic Soul’. He concludes that by 1979 the man’s extraordinary creativity was more or less spent and his subsequent output, successful though it may ''every party where you have been, was in effect treading water up to his ‘elegant, unannounced retirement’ in 2007introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548879</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Victoria GlendinningFrederic Gros|title=Raffles And the Golden Opportunity|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Although Raffles has gone down in history as the founder of Singapore his roots were far from grand. He had no advantages apart from his own drive and determination and his professional life began with a lowly clerkship with the East india Company, then as large and ungainly as many a government. When he went abroad on behalf A Philosophy of the Company he quickly learned the merits of doing something and asking permission afterwards, not least because of the time taken to contact London and then receive a reply. Even if all went well this could take the best part of a year - by which time the original question could well be academic.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686032</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Christopher Simon Sykes|title=Hockney: The Biography, Volume 1, 1937-1975Walking

|genre=ArtPolitics and Society|summary=As I confess I picked this one of the major names of British twentieth century art, David Hockney has always been a larger than life figure. Published to coincide with his 75th birthday, this is the first volume of a biography which tells his story up to 1975.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846057086</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lois Banner|title=Marilyn: The Passion and from the Paradox|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=With the possible exception of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe is probably the most written-about deceased woman library in twentiethmy pre-century historylockdown forage of random stuff. The thirty-six years of her life and the manner of her death will no doubt continue Now I have to provide go out an opportunity for as many writers as they buy my own copy so that I can turn down the pages I have since her sudden passing. After a decade of research Lois Banner, a Professor of History marked and Gender Studies at university in California, has added another weighty tome return to the relevant shelves. As a self-styled pioneer of second-wave feminism and the new women’s history, she has some interesting insights its varying wisdom when I need to offer into her subject’s life as a gender role model.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408814102</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Penny Junor|title=Prince William: Born to be King: An Intimate Portrait|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Prince William is one of the few people who genuinely needs no introduction Some books draw you in slowly. He's been This one had me in the public eye since his birth and the interest is certain to increase rather than diminish as time goes by. On the other hand he first two pages, wherein Gros explains why ''walking isnot a sport'' only thirty. Is there really going to be enough to warrant a book and will it be anything more than an attempt to cash in on his marriage in 2011 and the current interest in all things royal engendered by the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? You can see that I was something of a reluctant reader - my sympathies are republican rather than royalist and in addition Penny Junor is known to be a supporter of Prince Charles in what can be described as the War of the Waleses. Was this ''really'' going to be a book which I would enjoy?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444720392</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreview|author=Shirley Harrison|title=Sylvia Pankhurst: The Rebellious Suffragette|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=To some extent, the history of the suffragettes was also the history of the Pankhurst family. Sylvia, born in 1882, was the second daughter of Dr Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst, and one of three sisters. The family had always been heavily politicised, Richard being a founder member of the Fabian Society alongside George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, and the children had quite an austere upbringing. When their father’s health took a sudden turn for the worse in 1898, Emmeline and eldest daughter Christabel were abroad on business and Sylvia was left in charge of her younger siblings as well as having to nurse him, taking the full force of the shock when he died in her arms. With his passing the family were left strangely detached from each other. His widow became heavily involved in public work and political agitation, an increasingly remote mother from the young children who needed her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780950187</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tracy Borman|title=Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror, first Queen of England|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Writing the biography of any woman who lived as long ago as the eleventh century, even someone as illustrious as a Queen, is a pretty thankless task. There will always be huge gaps in the knowledge available. For example we do not know when Matilda was born, and likewise we do not have a precise date for her marriage, although we do know when she died. No lifelike images of her are known, though evidence suggests that she was quite short of stature. In a male-dominated society, there are approximate records of when her sons were born, but not her daughters. Even more confusingly perhaps, many of the stories passed down to us throughout history are quite probably false. It is hardly surprising that this appears to be the first full-length life of her yet to appear in English.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549131</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael RosenSharon Blackie|title=Fantastic Mr DahlIf Women Rose Rooted

|genre=Children's Non-FictionBiography|summary=Reading this I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is rather like curling up in a deep, squishy armchair with a cup of cocoa and some squashed-fly biscuits while a favourite uncle chats setting out to you about books. He tells you interesting things about Roald Dahlbuy my own copy before I's life, and then he discusses how those events may have affected his writing, secure in ve finished reading the knowledge that you already know and love the storiesone I've borrowed. Just as important, he pauses in his chat from time I want to time to ask your opinion — and itavoid clichés like 'powerful' 's clear heinspiring's really interested in your answer. Do you prefer the original version of 'life-changing'James – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the Giant Peach'third – but clichés exist for a reason and I', or the one which was eventually published? Can you imagine how funny m not sure I can succinctly put it would be to see your grandfather looking in through your bedroom window, like the BFG?any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141322136</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Leo McKinstry0241446732|title=Jack HobbsOur House is on Fire: England's Greatest CricketerScenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg

|genre=SportPolitics and Society|summary=Back in The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the early 1920sparenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, there were only three Test cricket playing nations; Englandthen nine years old, Australia and South Africastruggled with what was happening. In the summer of 2012such circumstances, both nations have been on tour; Australia recently beaten comprehensively at one day cricket and South Africa about it's natural to start seek a test series solution close to determine the best Test nation in the world. Given that history is repeating itselfhome, but eventually, it seems appropriate became clear to the family that they were ''burned-out people on a new biography of Jack Hobbs, Englandburned-out planet''s greatest run scorer and . If they were to find a man who repeatedly blunted the bowling attacks of both nations, should become available nowway to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224083309</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert K Massie0648684806|title=Catherine the GreatClara Colby: Portrait of a Woman|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Already known for major biographies of Nicholas and Alexandra, and of Peter the Great, Massie has now written an equally full and absorbing life of the late eighteenth-century reigning Empress.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0679456724</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe International Suffragist|author=Tim Ewart|title=The Treasures of Queen ElizabethJohn Holliday|rating=3.54

|summary=Tim Ewart is Royal Correspondent for ITV News, which must be one The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the perfect starting points for writing a biography USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of the Queen as some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she celebrates remained with her diamond jubileegrandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She's was the only child in the second British monarch household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to achieve this landmark - join the other being Queen Victoriafamily. After sixty Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years on the throne - , had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and eighty six died in public life - there's childbirth not much which isn't known about long after Clara arrived. As the Queen eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and few pictures which haven't previously seen the light of day, but Ewart's book is marked out by the inclusion of memorabilia which will have Wisconsin was a freshness for many readersrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780970064</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennie Bond1789017977|title=ElizabethRonnie and Hilda's Romance: A Diamond Jubilee PortraitTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams

|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinaryRonnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. But the host, painter Benjamin Robert HaydonThere's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was no ordinary artistalready many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. He For a while, the family was a friend of many of quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the major artistic 1929 Depression and literary figures of the day, in addition five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to being an ambitious painter of historical scenesa very different lifestyle. Sadly, One thing he did inherit from his ambition father was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilities, one need to be well-turned-out and a half centuries after this would stay with him throughout his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as welllife. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TuringPatti Smith|title=Alan M Turing: Centenary EditionYear of the Monkey

|summary=June 2012 will see On the centenary coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the birth lunar year of Alan Turingthe monkey - one packed with mischief, brilliant mathematiciansorrow, the man who played a major part in breaking the Enigma codes in the Second World War and is widely thought to be the father of computer scienceunexpected moments. To celebrate the anniversary Cambridge University Press have reprinted In a short biography written by Turingstranger's mother and included a memoir written by his older brotherwords, John. I'm rarely impressed by biographies written by [[No Ordinary Man by Dominic Carman|family members]] particularly when they're still coming to terms with their own griefAnything is possible: after all, but this book is startling for what it says about 's the year of the family members as much monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, as for what it says about Alan Turingthe shifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1107020581</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sally E Svenson1912242052|title=Lily, Duchess of Marlborough (1854 - 1909): A Portrait with HusbandsO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=43|genre=BiographyArt|summary=The woman we will eventually come ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to know as Lily, Duchess of Marlborough was born Eliza Warren Price in Troywalk the mountains alone, New York in 1854. Her father hailed from Bluegrass Country in Kentucky and met his future wife (who was from Troy) in Washington DC. The family was comfortably off (but not rich) and became part of the Troy's social elite when they returned because he had to live there. Lily (for work, as she became known) had an unremarkable childhood and youth a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but became wealthy though her marriage because he wanted to Louis Hammersley, who died when she was twenty eight for pleasure and left her a wealthy widowadventure. His will would leave her legal problems which would simmer all her life rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and even after her own death twenty one years and two more husbands laterits literary consequences, changed our view of the world''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1457507765</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane BrownGraff_Find|title=Lancelot 'Capability' Brown: The Omnipotent Magician 1716-1783|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Among those who helped their contemporaries living through the Age of Enlightenment to see the world around them in a different light, Brown was unquestionably one of the most influential. Having trained as a gardener, as a young man he acquired an exhaustive knowledge of plants and trees, as well as of drainage and water management. To this was added a rare ability to look at the dullest of gardens and landscapes, decide that they had 'capabilities' for improvement (hence the time-honoured epithet), and persuade the owner that a transformation was both possible and desirable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951794</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFind Another Place|author=Johanna Adorjan|title=An Exclusive LoveBen Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=This moving memoir tells of the double suicide of both István (When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a Hungarian-Jewish form plastic folder of Stephen) and handwritten notes from his wife Vera one Sunday morning in October. The story is told by their granddaughterjournal, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956. It ends with the police reports he didn't take much notice of the duty officer dated 15.10it.91 with At the discovery age of their bodies in their bungalow in the Charlottenlund24, a town of Graff didn't realise the Capital Region gravity of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fateful, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorablepages he was holding. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karen Blumenthal1789016304|title=Steve JobsWar and Love: The Man Who Thought DifferentA family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary=Framed Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by Jobswhat she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' iconic speech at a Stanford College graduation ceremony, but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the three stories he told the students, about connecting city during the dotswar years, love but only five thousand survived and loss, and mortality, Martin could not understand how this biography gives could be allowed to happen in a succinct and balanced account of Jobs' lifecountry with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, his successes and his failures, his passions and his ideals, and his infamously polarized personality. The author actively annotates that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the backstory of Jobs with references from this speechway that it did, but initial protests melted away as well as future events, carefully chosen statistics, and Jobsthe organisers became more circumspect. It' own reminiscence, giving s an atrocity on a rich context to his story. Jobs' achievements are incredible and they're not simply down to his genius, vast scale but his attitudes towards life and his incredible charismamade up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408832062</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot1786893452|title=Dotter of Her Father's EyesThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=Picture Here in the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptorWest, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridors of Lord Grimthorpe's mansionsome scaremongering about them. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the balconies of the coastal villa at Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrastinvestigative journalism they carry out, energetically inspired outsiders to passionate love affairs. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous, like E.M.Forster, Virginia Woolf, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West world and then there was the situations that tempestuous iconoclast, D.H.Lawrencerefugees find themselves in. Many such lives were inspired by both landscape and lust, fashioned by each otherIt's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here rare that we learn of talents find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and beauty this is a rare opportunity to do that inspires artistic endeavour, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. Shein this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends born in the pages middle of annotated diaries which became ''A Book of Secrets''a revolution in Iran, fleeing to America as a ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548941</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colin Grant0857058320|title=I & I: The Natural MysticsLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=Just mention ''Lord Of All the word reggae, and Dead'' is a journey to uncover the name that nearly always springs to mind is that of Bob Marley author's lost ancestor's life and the Wailersdeath. The music has always been very much a product of Cercas is searching for the Jamaican culture, nurtured meaning behind his great uncle's death in years of turbulent historythe Spanish Civil War. In this book Colin GrantManuel Mena, born in Britain of Jamaican parentsCercas' great uncle, goes back deep into its roots, and in is the figure who looms large over the process examines book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the childhood lives centre of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Neville Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer, this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to provide an account of be a hero whilst having fought for the group – but much more than thatwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd1788037812|title=DickensThe Fraternity of the Estranged: A Memoir of Middle AgeThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=45

|summary=With publishers falling over each other Originally passed in an effort to outdo each other 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in celebrating place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the bicentenary nature of Charles Dickens’ birthhomosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, it as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was perhaps inevitable that we should see a reappearance common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of what has become these men were hugely significant – contributing to the modern standard lifescientific understanding of homosexuality, by Peter Ackroyd. The 1200-page original was first published in 1990and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, while this 600leading to the milestone legalisation of same-page abridged edition surfaced sex relationships in 1994, and now makes another timely appearance1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099437090</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul HendricksonBuckland_Zoo|title=Hemingway's BoatThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: Everything he loved in lifeFrank Buckland, and lost, 1934-1961forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling|rating=4.5

|summary=This substantial volume is not exactly As a full biography of Ernest Hemingway. In fact, it might almost have been subtitled ‘The rise and fall’. Its theme is more or less conservationist in Victorian England before the second half of his lifeterm existed, from 1934, when he returned from an African safari and took delivery Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of his boat Pilar, to his tragic death 27 years latertime. Hendrickson intends it to be an account of the writerSurgeon, bringing together the different elements of his life – fishingnaturalist, friendshipveterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, wives and family - and above all, naturally, his writingany biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847921930</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah BradfordWilliams_Captain|title=Queen Elizabeth IICaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: Her His Military Life in Our and Times|author=Ivor George Williams

|summary=As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the Queen (published 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in 1996), command of her father George VIthe troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, Australia: his wife and her daughter-in-law Diana, Sarah Bradford needs little introductionyoung son accompanied him. At around 260 pages of textHe was not destined to live a long life, this is barely half dying suddenly at the length age of her other titles34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, and probably aimed more at but she was also responsible for the general reader with an eye on convicts who worked the Diamond Jubilee marketland. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mick O'SheaPeacock_mountain|title=Amy Winehouse: Into The Mountain, A Losing GameLife of Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock|rating=4.5

|summary=At the risk of stating Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the obviousapproach, this is a sad book. Writing this review some five months after her deathbut I also think we sell ourselves short by it, now and we sell the immediate smoke has cleared, it is apparent from this book (myriad lesser-known authors short as well as . So while, like most other general sources) that she was a gifted performerpeople I have my favourite genres, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her for a lengthy career long after scores of aspiring X-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorousfavoured authors, more steady careers. After alland while, her idols had been not only near-contemporaries like Michael Jackson most other people I read the reviews and Missy Elliottfollow up on what appeals, but I also those of an earlier generation such as the classic 1960s girl groups, as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, with whom she was thrilled have a third-string to record a duet four months before she diedmy reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Matthew Hollis|title=Now All Roads Lead Move on to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Most historians tend to refer to Edwardian England as the thirteen-year interlude between the Victorian era and the shots at Sarajevo which precipitated the First World War, an era of relative stability. However, there had been ominous rumblings from the new order of things during the two years or so prior to June 1914, particularly from a new spirit among the younger literary generation. The old Victorian writers, notably the uniquely terrible Poet Laureate Alfred Austin (doubtless a very good man, but an almost comically inept writer of verse) were dismissed as irredeemably old hat by the likes of Rupert Brooke and W.H. Davies. For a short time London was the poetry capital of the world, and the book opens with the opening in January 1913 of Harold Monro’s poetry bookshop in Bloomsbury, which rapidly became a magnet for the self-proclaimed Georgian poets and readers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571245986</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Julia Blackburn|title=Thin Paths: Journeys in and Around an Italian Mountain Village|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Julia Blackburn had known Herman for many years, but they had drifted apart. She put the postcard which she received from him in an album: it mentioned a cottage he had discovered in Liguria and which he was renovating. Some time later there was another postcard and an invitation to visit. Over time the cottage would become her home and Herman her husband. 'Thin Paths' is the stories of the people who inhabit this harsh, wild landscape and of the way in which the landscape has formed the people. The thin paths join the people and the places together in a way of life which is rare.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090682</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Erica Heller|title=Yossarian Slept Here|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary='To live forever or die in the attempt' was the essential glory in life and living that is at the heart of John Yossarian in [[Catch 22 by Joseph Heller|Catch 22Newest Business and Finance Reviews]]. This autobiography of the daughter of his creator, Joseph Heller, reveals how the same excitement and joie de vivre suffused throughout the Heller family. The harebrained unpredictability, the madcap exploits and relationships bowl us through this book with terrific pace and verve.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570084</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chambers and Joan Bakewell|title=Chambers Biographical Dictionary|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=It's now the ninth edition of this famous volume and that came as a bit of a shock when I glanced at the bookcase and realised that my copy dated back to 1974 and was still in regular use for a quick guide as to who might have been who. It's advertised as 'the great, the good, the not-so-great and the downright wicked' and it's difficult to better that summary. It has eighteen thousand biographies and differs from ''Who's Who'' with it's thirty thousand entries in that covers the dead as well as the living and the ''interesting'' rather than those who need to be included because they have achieved a certain position.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0550106936</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Claire Tomalin|title=Charles Dickens: A Life|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Having already written biographies of Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen, among others, to say nothing of a study of Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan, Claire Tomalin is admirably qualified to produce a major life of the author to mark the bicentenary of his birth in 1812. (Sadly, she says this will be her last large-scale book).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917672</amazonuk>}}