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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Simpson1788360702|title=Alastair SimCharles, The Alternative Prince: The Star of Scrooge and the Belles of St Trinian'sAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, The mere mention of Alastair Sim conjures up visions of pictures made during Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the 1950s when a more gentle humour was Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the order background of the dayscientific evidence. Yet the man hated There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and did his best to avoid publicity, claiming that the person the public saw on screen revealed all that anybody needed relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to know about him. How he would have fared twenty years later in the age reputation of a more intrusive pressman who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, one cannot but wonderlogical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752453726</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Crawford1739805100|title=The BardLoving the Enemy: Robert Burns - Building bridges in a biographytime of war|author=Andrew March
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=If Shakespeare is England''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's own Bardgrandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the comparatively shortlived Robert Burns – who lived and worked nearly two centuries later – fulfils early days of the equivalent role Nazi regime in Scottish iconography more than adequatelythe 1930s. Yet as this very thorough biography demonstratesFred, there is much more to a sensitive and thoughtful man, had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the man than growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the wordsmith of time. Fred'Auld Lang Synes attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren' t universally successful but he did make friendships and 'Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie'connections that lasted for a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844139301</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Linda PorterWill Brooker|title=Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine ParrTruth About Lisa Jewell|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Katherine Parr was the last and arguably Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most fortunate of King Henry VIIIsuccessful British authors I's six wivesve never knowingly read. Apart from Anne Now meet Will Brooker, one of Clevesthe thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the speedily divorced 'Flanders mare'two closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the only one author events I get to survive himattend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. And while all six Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of the queens consort remain rather shadowy figureslatest title, and struggling with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this biography gives is the impression that she was probably the most intelligent and well-rounded personality of them allresult.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230710395</amazonuk>1529136024
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David ClaytonMartha Leigh|title=The Richard Beckinsale StoryInvisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=A generation probably knows Richard Beckinsale only from repeats 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 UK Gold TV channels, and from occasional mentions in the context complete correspondence of 'how great he would have been if only…' In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped the 30philosopher Jean-year-old sitcom favourite as Jacques Rousseau, his life's work. Her mother is a rising major star of concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the 80s who would blossom into one practicalities of life. There is love in the great all-round stage actors. One year later, he was deadhouse but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0752454404</amazonuk>1800460384
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Van der KistePolly Barton|title=Sons, Servants and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's LifeFifty Sounds
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Like Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have been written about Queen Victoriavisited by now. I may get there later this year, but John Van der Kiste has taken I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the unusual step question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of using the men question in her life to illuminate some dark corners the first essay, which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course is on the most famous man in her life, husband and Prince Consort Albert isnsound ''giro't 'son, servant or statesman' – which she describes as promised by being, among other things, the title sound of the book, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always ''every party where you have a man in her life who would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate herintroduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>1913097501
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maureen EmersonFrederic Gros|title=Escape to ProvenceA Philosophy of Walking|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=In the 1920s two women, one American, I confess I picked this one British, settled in up from the south of France, both for different reasons. Elisabeth Starr had left her home library in Philadelphia after an unhappy childhood and the death, possibly suicide, my pre-lockdown forage of her fiancé, a nephew of the American Presidentrandom stuff. Drawn Now I have to Paris, 'go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the chosen European city for the sophisticated pages I have marked and well-heeled of the New World', she worked as a nurse during the Great War, then moved return to its varying wisdom when I need to Provence where she made her home in an ancient stone house, the Castello, and took French citizenship. Winifred (Peggy) Fortescue was the wife of the Royal Librarian at Windsor, who retired in 1926 with a knighthood and became a renowned (though hardly successful Some books draw you in financial terms) military historianslowly. After the fall of the pound, it was hard for them to make ends meet in England, and they were drawn to find a property This one had me in Provence partly by the lifestylefirst two pages, partly by wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a favourable exchange ratesport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0955832101</amazonuk>1781688370
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sushila Anand Sharon Blackie|title=Daisy: The Lives and Loves of the Countess of WarwickIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=Born Daisy Maynard in 1861, the Countess of Warwick lived I normally say that you can tell how much a colourful life book means to me by any standardshow many pages have corners turned down. She was notoriously promiscuous, a spendthrift who did not hesitate Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to try and provoke a royal scandal buy my own copy before I've finished reading the one I've borrowed. I want to shore up her parlous finances, avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the first two and although she relished her lifestyle to only time will tell about the full, she spent several years fighting wholeheartedly third – but clichés exist for the pioneer socialists in Britaina reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0749909773</amazonuk>1912836017
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Lewis0241446732|title=The Blind SideOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=45|genre=SportPolitics and Society|summary=I think my husband The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was a little taken aback to see me curled up an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the sofa engrossed in a book about American Footballparenting of their two daughters. I suppose I should admit that I didn't actually know it Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was going to be about American Footballhappening. WellIn such circumstances, I knew it was about 's natural to seek a boy who ''played'' American Footballsolution close to home, but I'd thought that was just going eventually, it became clear to be the background story, you know, like in family that they were ''Jerry Maguireburned-out people on a burned-out planet''. So the first chapter seemed If they were to go on and on forever, and I thought my head might pop from reading about quarterbacks and blind sides and plays and offence and defence and running statistics...but then somehow I stumbled find a way to the real heart of the story; the story of Michael Oher, a young African-American from the slums of Memphis whose father was never around, and whose mother was a drug addict and lost him live happily again their solution would need to social services at a young agebe radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039333838X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Billy Hopkins0648684806|title=Tommy's WorldClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=I came The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to this biography having read the USA. At the time she was just three -years-old but because of Hardysome childhood ailment, she wasn's novelst allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, two quite recentlywho doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and some her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of his poetrythe United States and life was hard, but knowing very little about him as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a personfew months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably to life in these pagesAs the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer Roberts1789017977|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time the richest Ronnie and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune to be born in during the Hilda'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively s Romance: Towards a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewNew Life after World War II|author=Graham McCann|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-Thomas|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=When I was in my early teens, it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five-star British comedy film around. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grin, cigarette holder and inimitable 'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best of all, the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stella Tillyard |title=A Royal Affair: George III and His Troublesome SiblingsWendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=King George III Ronnie Williams was not the luckiest son of English sovereignsThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. America, and then his sons, There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in that order, gave him no end of grief1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and the last he might well have shaved a few years of off his life were clouded by madnessage. It is thus often overlooked thatFor a while, before these troubles arose the family was quite well-to haunt this most conscientious monarch, he also -do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a thankless task in trying very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to control be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his siblingslife. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099428563</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tracy Borman Patti Smith|title=Elizabeth's Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=So many biographies have been written about the life and times of England's longest-lived and longest reigning sovereign that one might wonder whether there is anything new left to say about her. However Tracy Borman has found an interesting new angle – by telling the story Year of her life through the women closest to her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082264</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Lever|title=Me CheetaMonkey
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Even todayOn the coast of Santa Cruz, London is a remarkable compromise Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the old monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and the newunexpected moments. As Alistair Duncan shows in this volumeIn a stranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, it's the city of Conan Doyle and Holmes has changed – yet not changed. There have been a handful year of books in the past on monkey'Holmes's London', but this is . As Smith wanders the first coast of its kind to place equal emphasis Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on places associated with , as it the detective and his creatorshifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904312500</amazonuk>1526614758
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul R Spiring (Editor) 1912242052|title=Bobbles & Plum: Four Satirical Playlets by Bertram Fletcher Robinson and PG WodehouseO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=P.G. Wodehouse needs little if any introduction, but Bertram Fletcher Robinson's life and career were cut short and he is little known outside his connections with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This set of satirical playlets on which they collaborated, published in journals between 1904 and 1907 and virtually forgotten since, are presented in book form 'Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first time. As such they show how person to walk the careers of both men were evolvingmountains alone, particularly while Wodehouse was finding his feet and experimenting with the different facets of journalism before finding his niche in comic fiction.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312586</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Wynter Bee and Lucy Clapham |title=People of the Day 4: The Rich and Famous Caricatured|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Have you ever been asked not because he had to buy for work, as a book in aid of a charity miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and wished that you'd given a donation and not taken the book? adventure. WellHis rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, if you have I'm hoping to persuade you that there are exceptions to every rule and this book in aid its literary consequences, changed our view of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust is definitely worth the cover priceworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954811038</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Nicholas Graff_Find|title=Idle Thoughts on Jerome K Jerome: A 150th Anniversary Celebration|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Although he was a prolific novelist, short story writer, dramatist and journalist, Jerome Klapka Jerome will always be remembered first and foremost as the author of ''Three Men in a Boat''. This fascinating anthology, published on the 150th anniversary of his birth, reminds us that there was far more to the man than that one admittedly enduring book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956221203</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFind Another Place|author=Richard D Ryder|title=Nelson, Hitler and Diana|rating=4|genre=Popular Science|summary=Was Horatio Nelson, a navy officer of great renown, forever thrusting himself into the limelight, doing it because his mother passed away when he was nine? Was Hitler overly affected by his father dying in a time of paternal disapproval, and a kind of Oedipal reaction to being the man in the house making him suffer when she herself died? And can Diana, Princess of Wales' parents' divorce lead to a claim she was a sufferer of borderline personality disorder?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401662</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Trevor Hamilton |title=Immortal Longings: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian Search for Life After Death|rating=4|genre=Biography |summary=Born in 1843, Frederic Myers began his career as a classical lecturer at Cambridge University, but disliked teaching and soon gave it up in favour of writing poetry and essays in literature. Although his social circle included men such as Gladstone, Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning and Prince Leopold, the most intellectual of Queen Victoria's sons, his books (which are not so well remembered today) might have been his sole claim to fame, had it not been for his passionate curiosity about the meaning of human life. If it had a purpose, he was convinced, it could only be discovered through the study of human experiences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401239</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul R Spiring (Editor) |title=The World of Vanity Fair - Bertram Fletcher Robinson|rating=5|genre=Biography |summary=Every now and then, you comes across a really sumptuous book, where just turning and looking at the pages takes you into another world. Such is the case with this one. ''Vanity Fair'' was a gentler Victorian forerunner of ''Private Eye''. Subtitled, ''A Weekly'' ''Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares'', it appeared between 1868 and 1914. Like the more successful, longer-lasting ''Punch'', it began with radical aspirations, intending ''to expose what'' [the editor] ''perceived to be the'' ''vanities of the elite social classes''. However its satire was gently humorous rather than malicious, and almost everybody who was portrayed in its pages was flattered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312535</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Piers Dudgeon|title=Captivated: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers and the Dark Side of NeverlandBen Graff
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Emma Charles was on the edge When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of thinking that she and her family were doing quite well. They were an ordinary family – mumhandwritten notes from his journal, dad, two daughters, three dogs, a rabbit and a couple he didn't take much notice of guinea pigsit. Sprinkle in an Open University course for Mum, private schooling for At the girlsage of 24, a nice car in Graff didn't realise the drive gravity of the nice house, good clothes and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with the way that life pages he was going. Then her fifteen year old daughter, Tamsin, gave her a note, couched in graphic terms, saying that her father had been sexually abusing her for the past five years.In moments the family's life fell apart. Gone were all the certainties, the hopes and the expectations. In came the police, Social Services and Child Protection Officersholding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090005</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jacqueline Walker1789016304|title=Pilgrim StateWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The title sounds more indicative Diary of a novel by [[:Category:Dorothy Dunnett|Dorothy Dunnett]] or Jean Plaidy than a biographyAnn Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. Then a brief prologue starts A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the story at city during the very endwar years, when Queen Victoria receives the unexpected news of the death of Sir Howard Elphinstonebut only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. An equally short first chapter gives us a glimpse of Most people believed that the man some thirty years earlier in occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the thick of battle at Germans might reach the Crimea. Only after city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that do we 'reach' his birth the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in 1829the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and itIt's an atrocity on a good way vast scale but made up of tens of introducing this very interesting life. As the husband thousands of his subject's great-great-granddaughter, the author is well qualified to write itindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>055215508X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Coxe and Peter Danckwerts (Editor)1786893452|title=Anecdotes of George Frederick Handel and John Christopher Smith|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=Written by the stepson of John Christopher Smith (a friend of Handel and composer in his own right), ''Anecdotes'' is an overview of two men who in their own ways were remarkable. Handel, of course, was a musical genius while Smith was a man of great kindness — a good friend of Coxe's father, he married his widow to ensure she and her children would be cared for.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904799396</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Barney Hoskyns|title=Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom WaitsDina Nayeri
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Born and raised Here in Los Angelesthe West, Tom Waits probably enjoys we see news reports about immigrants on a status comparable to regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the UK's Richard Thompson. He has never sold investigative journalism they carry out to a mass pop audience, preferring instead outsiders to sustain an engagingly low-key career for over 30 years, feted by critics, fellow artists the world and a cult following while only achieving modest record salesthe situations that refugees find themselves in. While his 80s albums It'Swordfishtrombones' and 'Rain Dogs' are regarded as among s rare that we find out the finest of journeys from the decaderefugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, most of his royalties have come through cover versions of his songs. Twoin this intelligent, 'Downtown Train' powerful and 'Tom Traubert's Blues', have been Top 10 hits for Rod Stewart, moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who once said that they paid for was born in the swimming pool middle of a revolution in Tom's gardenIran, while in his early days the Eagles gave him fleeing to America as a boost by recording 'Ol' 55' on their third albumten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571235522</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Victor Schoelcher (Author), Anton de Moresco (Editor), James Lowe (Translator) 0857058320|title=The Life of HandelLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Although he ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is probably best remembered searching for the meaning behind his active role great uncle's death in the abolition of slavery in Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the French colonies, and as a campaigner book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for womenFrancisco Franco's rights, Victor Schoelcher was also a noted musicologistforces. His biography of the composer Handel, first published in 1857, was one of the first scholarly works Cercas ruminates on the subject, and why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the time centre of this book is whether it was generally regarded as one of is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the finest portraits of a musician or composer ever writtenwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904799388</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain McCalman1788037812|title=Darwin's ArmadaThe Fraternity of the Estranged: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle The Fight for the Theory of EvolutionHomosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=A look at Darwin's journey Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in 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 Beaglethe nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as journeys by Joseph Hookerthe heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear the milestone legalisation of nonsame-fiction will enjoy itsex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737266X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances OsborneBuckland_Zoo|title=The Bolter|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Life in London just after Man Who Ate the Great War must have been jollyZoo: Frank Buckland, even frightfully good fun, what – for the right (or the wrong?) people. The early 1920s were the years of the bright young things, the men who had been lucky enough to return from the fighting still in one piece, determined to make up for years forgotten hero of tedium in the trenches by whooping it up with the equally pleasure-loving gals barely out of their teens, just as willing to throw morals and discretion to the winds and party round the clock. This was the age when women thought nothing of receiving invited company while in the bath and slowly getting dressed in front of them. One hostess even greeted her guests walking down the staircase of her Belgrave Square mansion wearing a string of the family pearls – and nothing else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084809</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewnatural history|author=Doris Kearns Goodwin|title=Team of RivalsRichard Girling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This hefty tome, As a conservationist in Victorian England before the cover tells usterm existed, is 'the book that inspired Barack Obama'Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of his time. For what it's worthSurgeon, naturalist, Obama's name appears no less than nine times on the cover veterinarian and spine, while Lincoln's appears only sixeccentric sums him up perfectly, and that of the author any biographer is immediately presented with a mere twocolourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043725</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Gribbin and Michael WhiteWilliams_Captain|title=Darwin: A Life in Science|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=This straightforward and likeable biography of Charles Darwin charts the evolution Captain Ronald Campbell of his theories of evolutionBombala Station, while providing solid insights into the man in the context of his upbringing, education and family life. Importantly, it makes you want to read ''On the Origin of the Species'', acting as a primer for the ideas introduced in that famous volume. ''DarwinCambalong: A His Military Life in Science'' is pitched beautifully for the reader of popular science, yet gives plenty of signposts enabling future study. It also gives a very believable picture of Darwin, based on convincing evidence and without falling into florid psychological speculation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847391494</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewTimes|author=Michael D Lemonick|title=The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the CosmosIvor George Williams
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=No-one can ever look at In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the night skies above our heads as Galileo did17th Regiment of Foot. The light pollution covering so much He was in command of our planet makes it impossible the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to see nearly as much as he mightSydney, Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. ConverselyHe was not destined to live a long life, he would have adored living dying suddenly at the age of 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in a time such as ours – with the technology difficult position: not only did she have their farm to show him so much he couldn't seemanage, so much he daren't dream ofbut she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the land. Sitting happily between those two extremes was William HerschelTwo years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039306574X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David GrannPeacock_mountain|title=Into The Lost City of Z: Mountain, A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=For Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett there was more to the Amazonian jungle than El Dorado. His target was a treasure of a different nature – a lost city to be discovered because it was a city, not for any spurious material wealth it might hold. Could an entire civilisation have been founded in the inhospitable tracks of rain forest, and left remains he might find fame in locating? As this brilliant biography shows, Fawcett was the best man around to find it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847374360</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Wynter Bee and Lucy Clapham|title=People Life of the Day 3: The Rich and Famous Caricatured|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=I often find myself paying money for books where the profits go to charity and I'm usually left with the feeling that I'd much rather someone had simply asked me for a donation and not wasted the paper. Every once in a while a book comes along which proves me wrong and there's only one way to describe the ''People of the Day'' series. The books are a delight and it's all in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095481102X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewNan Shepherd|author=John Matteson|title=Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father Charlotte Peacock
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Louisa May Alcott Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and her father, Amos Bronson, shared so many books… I can understand the same birthdayapproach, she being born on 29 November 1832but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, his thirty-third. Throughout their lives, father and daughter remained extraordinarily close, and even almost died together. When he finally succumbed after a stroke and longwe sell the myriad lesser-drawn out illness on 4 March 1888, she was too ill to be told and followed him two days later. Between them, they saw life known authors short as 'a persistent but failed quest for perfection', regarding themselves in their vain pursuit of paradise on earth as Eden's outcasts, hence the title of this dual biographywell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393333590</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ranginui Walker |title=Paki Harrison: Tohunga Whakairo : the Story of a Master Carver |rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=It was an inspired choice that Ranginui Walker was commissioned to write this book. He successfully places the extraordinary character of master carver Paki Harrison into an historicalSo while, culturallike most other people I have my favourite genres, academic and political contextfavoured authors, whilst never letting us forget that this almost mythical genius is very much a man with his personal conflictsand while, successes and devotion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0143010069</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Megan Hutching|title=Over like most other people I read the Wide reviews and Trackless Sea: the Pioneer Women and Girls of New Zealand|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=This book offers a valuable insight into the lives of twelve pioneer women who sufferedfollow up on what appeals, endured and triumphed in New Zealand. Their journey by boat from Europe to New Zealand was a long and sometimes perilous one. The European explorers had previously been certain that their destination existed, mainly because they abhorred a vacuum, and couldn't believe there could be such a vast expanse of ocean without the existence of a great land. Some I also believed that without have a land mass south of the Tropic of Capricorn, the world would be tipped upside down, while others were fearful they would burn up whilst crossing the equator, a myth finally dispelled by the Portuguese voyaging around Africa.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869507061</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Joanne Drayton|title=Ngaio Marshthird-string to my reading bow: Her Life in Crime|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Joanne Drayton successfully introduces us to the reclusive Ngaio Marsh, her extraordinary success, and her love for the theatre, the arts, her friends and the country she loved and would always call homerandomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869506359</amazonuk>
}}
