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[[Category:Biography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Bakewell1788360702|title=How to LiveCharles, The Alternative Prince: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer |rating=5|genre=An Unauthorised Biography|summary='Chance … really the way things happen,' wrote Howard Beck, the Chicago School sociologist. I visit Bookbag Towers with few preconceived ideas about the next book for review. I'll allow myself to fall for a quirky title or appealing cover, despite only a smattering of interest in the subject matter. Just occasionally this way, I stumble on a golden nugget so fascinating and well-written that I realise how lucky I am to be a reviewer. I'm so pleased to have chanced upon this inviting biography of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178922</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Baldwin|title=The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the RosesEdzard Ernst
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Due to the small amount For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of surviving personal sourcesalternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, any book which purports to be a biography of a 15-century subject is almost inevitably going to be more a The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Prince'life s opinions, beliefs and times' than a lifeaims against the background of the scientific evidence. In There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the case reputation of women a man who were sisters but not sovereigns or consorts themselvesis proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, the lack of data will be even more acutelogical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750950765</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Roe1739805100|title=The Private Lives Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of the Impressionistswar|author=Andrew March
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=In ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the early 1860s a group days of young Parisian artists were keen to exhibit their work, despite opposition from the official art worldNazi regime in the 1930s. Their protests at being spurned by the SalonFred, a sensitive and thoughtful man, the French equivalent had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the Royal Academy, resulted growing hostilities between nations unfolding in their paintings being shown Europe at the rather disparagingly-named Salon des Refusés, where crowds and critics came to view - and jeertime. When they held the first of their own exhibitions a few years later, one reviewer said that they Fred'seem s attempts to have declared war on beautyseparate individual people from ideology weren', while another assured his readers t universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that every canvas must have been the work of some practical joker who had dipped his brushes in paint, smeared it onto yards of canvas, and signed the result with several different nameslasted for a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099458349</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Will BirchBrooker|title=Ian Dury: The Definitive BiographyTruth About Lisa Jewell|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Ian Dury was always Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most individualsuccessful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, even contrary characters in one of the musical worldthousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. In a branch of showbiz where people often relied on good looks This book starts with the two meeting each other, as a short cut to stardomwell, he was no oil paintingand shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. During the pub rock eraThe meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, he and his groupof her anecdote about cup cakes, the Blockheadswords of her latest book she was reciting, ploughed and her being in a lonely furrow which owed more to jazz''black lace mini-funk than rockdress with gold brocade'n'roll(certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, and his songs extolled down the virtues of characters from Billericay or Plaistow rather than those from Memphis or Californiarabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. Alongside the young punk rock upstarts with whom Brooker decides he competed for inches 'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the rock presspublished author's life, working to make a success of the latest title, he was comparatively middle-agedand struggling with the next in line. As if that was not enoughJewell, due diligence appropriately done, in his own words childhood illness had left him a permanent 'raspberry ripple'agrees. And this is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0283071036</amazonuk>1529136024
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark SimpsonMartha Leigh|title=Alastair SimInvisible Ink: The Star of Scrooge and the Belles of St Trinian'sA Family Memoir|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=The mere mention of Alastair Sim conjures up visions of pictures made during the 1950s when 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 more gentle humour was Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the order complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Yet Neither parent is hugely interested in the man hated and did his best to avoid publicity, claiming that the person the public saw on screen revealed all that anybody needed to know about himpracticalities of life. How he would have fared twenty years later There is love in the age of house but also darker undercurrents that a more intrusive press, one cannot child does not fully understand but wonderknows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0752453726</amazonuk>1800460384
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert CrawfordPolly Barton|title=The Bard: Robert Burns - a biographyFifty Sounds
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=If Shakespeare is England's own BardWhere do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the comparatively shortlived Robert Burns – who lived question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and worked nearly two centuries later – fulfils if the equivalent role in Scottish iconography more than adequatelyworld hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. Yet as I may get there later this very thorough biography demonstratesyear, there is much more but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the man than question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the wordsmith of question in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro'Auld Lang Syne' and 'Wee– which she describes as being, sleekitamong other things, cowrinthe sound of ', tim'rous beastieevery party where you have to introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844139301</amazonuk>1913097501
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Linda PorterFrederic Gros|title=Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life A Philosophy of Katherine ParrWalking|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Katherine Parr was I confess I picked this one up from the last and arguably the most fortunate library in my pre-lockdown forage of King Henry VIII's six wivesrandom stuff. Apart from Anne of Cleves, Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the speedily divorced 'Flanders mare', she was the only one pages I have marked and return to its varying wisdom when I need to survive him. Some books draw you in slowly. And while all six of This one had me in the queens consort remain rather shadowy figuresfirst two pages, this biography gives the impression that she was probably the most intelligent and well-rounded personality of them allwherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230710395</amazonuk>1781688370
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David ClaytonSharon Blackie|title=The Richard Beckinsale StoryIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=A generation probably knows Richard Beckinsale only from repeats on the UK Gold TV channels, and from occasional mentions in the context of 'I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how great he would many pages have been if only…' corners turned down. In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped the 30-year-old sitcom favourite as a rising major star Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the 80s who would blossom into one of the great all-round stage actorsI've borrowed. One year later, he was deadI want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for a reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0752454404</amazonuk>1912836017
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der Kiste0241446732|title=SonsOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Servants Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's LifeSvante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Like The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have been written about Queen Victoria, but John Van der Kiste has taken the unusual step parenting of using the men in her life to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexploredtheir two daughters. Of course the most famous man in Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her lifesister, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'sonBeata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, servant or statesmanit' as promised by the title of the books natural to seek a solution close to home, but he established eventually, it became clear to the family that they were ''burned-out people on a trendburned-out planet''. Victoria, often regarded as If they were to find a difficult woman way to please, live happily again their solution would always have a man in her life who would, need to a greater or lesser extent, dominate herbe radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maureen Emerson0648684806|title=Escape to Provence|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=In the 1920s two women, one American, one British, settled in the south of France, both for different reasons. Elisabeth Starr had left her home in Philadelphia after an unhappy childhood and the death, possibly suicide, of her fiancé, a nephew of the American President. Drawn to Paris, 'the chosen European city for the sophisticated and well-heeled of the New World', she worked as a nurse during the Great War, then moved 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 in financial terms) military historian. 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 in Provence partly by the lifestyle, partly by a favourable exchange rate.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955832101</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=Sushila Anand |title=Daisy: The Lives and Loves of the Countess of WarwickJohn Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Born Daisy Maynard in 1861, the Countess The path of Warwick lived a colourful Clara Dorothy Bewick's life by any standardswas probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. She At the time she was notoriously promiscuousjust three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, a spendthrift who did not hesitate to try doted on her and provoke saw that she received a royal scandal to shore up good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her parlous financeschildhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and although life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she relished and her lifestyle grandparents eventually went to join the full, family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she spent several was married for fifteen years fighting wholeheartedly for , had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the pioneer socialists in Britaineldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749909773</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Lewis1789017977|title=The Blind SideRonnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=SportHistory|summary=I think my husband Ronnie Williams was a little taken aback to see me curled up on the sofa engrossed in a book about American Footballson of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. I suppose I should admit that I didnThere't actually know it 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 going to be about American Footballalready many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. Well, I knew it was about For a boy who ''played'' American Footballwhile, but I'd thought that the family was just going quite well-to be the background story, you know, like -do but disaster struck in ''Jerry Maguire''. So the first chapter seemed 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had 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 adjust to the real heart of the story; the story of Michael Oher, a young African-American very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from the slums of Memphis whose his father was never around, his need to be well-turned-out and whose mother was a drug addict and lost this would stay with him to social services throughout his life. He joined the army at a young ageeighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039333838X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Billy HopkinsPatti Smith|title=Tommy's WorldYear of the Monkey
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tommy Hopkins was born in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of Manchester. His father had quite a good job and there wasn't a lot of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love and laughter. He was an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in the form of worldly goods. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgings. Even that tenuous security wasn't to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years old.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Claire Tomalin
|title=Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=I came to this biography having read three On the coast of HardySanta Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's novelswords, two quite recently''Anything is possible: after all, and some it's the year of the monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of his poetrySanta Cruz in solitude, but knowing very little about him as she reflects on a person. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably to year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in these pagesAmerica.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>1526614758
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer Roberts1912242052|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of PortugalO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined first person to become walk the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married mountains alone, not because he had to her uncle Infante Pedrofor work, seventeen years her senioras a miner, she had six children (outliving all but one of them)quarryman, and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious womanshepherd or pack-horse driver, she had the misfortune but because he wanted to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church for pleasure and state were vying for supremacyadventure. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, His rapturous encounters with a humanitarian approach to state affairstheir natural beauty, she was no Queen Elizabethand its literary consequences, no Catherine changed our view of the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantlyworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham McCannGraff_Find|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-ThomasFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=When I was in my early teensBen Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, he didn't take much notice of 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 At the most recognizable characters age of all with his gap-toothed grin24, cigarette holder and inimitable Graff didn'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best t realise the gravity of all, the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>pages he was holding.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stella Tillyard 1789016304|title=War and Love: A Royal Affair: George III family's testament of anguish, endurance and His Troublesome Siblingsdevotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=45
|genre=Biography
|summary=King George III Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was not the luckiest entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of English sovereigns. America, and Ann Frank'' but then his sons, in realised that order, gave him no end of grief, her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the last few city during the war years of his life , but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were clouded by madnessresistant to German occupation. It is thus often overlooked Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced thatthey would soon be pushed back, before these troubles arose that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to haunt this most conscientious monarchescalate in the way that it did, he also had but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a thankless task in trying to control his siblingsvast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099428563</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tracy Borman 1786893452|title=Elizabeth's Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin QueenUngrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=So many biographies have been Here in the West, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of those stories are written about by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to the life world and times of Englandthe situations that refugees find themselves in. It's longest-lived rare that we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and longest reigning sovereign that one might wonder whether there this is anything new left a rare opportunity to say about her. However Tracy Borman has found an interesting new angle – do that, in this intelligent, powerful and moving work by telling Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the story middle of her life through the women closest a revolution in Iran, fleeing to herAmerica as a ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082264</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Lever0857058320|title=Me CheetaLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Straight out of the golden age of Hollywood comes the bitchiest, most revealing memoir from one of its stars. There are scores to be settled, stars to be insulted, secrets to be hinted at none too subtley, and lost opportunities to be longed for. Oh, and the star telling all? Well, for those of you who can't tell from the title (or even the picture on the front cover) it's Cheeta - chimpanzee star of the Tarzan films.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007280165</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Philippe Auclair
|title=Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King
|rating=4
|genre=Sport
|summary=Even though I'm not a Manchester United fan, Eric Cantona is one of my all time favourite players and I was really excited to get the opportunity to read a book which was billed as revealing his innermost thoughts, and being the definitive account of his career.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706347</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Alistair Duncan
|title=Close to Holmes: A Look at the Connections Between Historical London, Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Even today, London ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a remarkable compromise of journey to uncover the old author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the newSpanish Civil War. As Alistair Duncan shows in this volumeManuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the city of Conan Doyle and Holmes has changed – yet not changedbook. There have been a handful of books in the past on 'HolmesHe died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's London', but forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this is dictator. The question at the first centre of its kind this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to place equal emphasis on places associated with be a hero whilst having fought for the detective and his creatorwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312500</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul R Spiring (Editor) 1788037812|title=Bobbles & PlumThe Fraternity of the Estranged: Four Satirical Playlets by Bertram Fletcher Robinson and PG WodehouseThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=POriginally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years.GBut during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Wodehouse needs little if any introductionBetween 1891 and 1908, but Bertram Fletcher Robinson's life and career three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were cut short written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and he is little known outside his connections with Sir Arthur Conan DoyleJohn Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. This set Exploring the margins of satirical playlets society and studying homosexuality was common on which they collaboratedthe European Continent, published but barely talked about in journals between 1904 and 1907 and virtually forgotten sincethe UK, are presented in book form for so the first time. As such they show how the careers publications of both these men were evolvinghugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, particularly while Wodehouse was finding his feet and experimenting with beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the different facets milestone legalisation of journalism before finding his niche same-sex relationships in comic fiction1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312586</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Wynter Bee and Lucy Clapham Buckland_Zoo|title=People of The Man Who Ate the Day 4Zoo: The Rich and Famous CaricaturedFrank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Have you ever been asked to buy As a book conservationist in aid Victorian England before the term existed, Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of a charity his time. Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and wished that you'd given a donation and not taken the book? Welleccentric sums him up perfectly, if you have I'm hoping to persuade you that there are exceptions to every rule and this book in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust any biographer is definitely worth the cover priceimmediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954811038</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreview|author=Jeremy Nicholas |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>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Richard D RyderWilliams_Captain|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 Captain Ronald Campbell of paternal disapprovalBombala Station, 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 LongingsCambalong: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian Search for His Military 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>}} {{newreviewTimes|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 Neverland|rating=3.5|genre=Biography |summary=According to D.H. Lawrence, J.M. Barrie ''has a fatal touch for those he loves. They die.'' Barrie had an extraordinary fascination with a childlike world of innocence and young boys who never grew up. Had it merely stopped at creating Peter Pan, all well and good. Unfortunately this obsession manifested itself in an unhealthy involvement with others, notably the du Maurier family.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520451</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Emma Charles|title=How Could He Do It?|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Emma Charles was on the edge of thinking that she and her family were doing quite well. They were an ordinary family – mum, dad, two daughters, three dogs, a rabbit and a couple of guinea pigs. Sprinkle in an Open University course for Mum, private schooling for the girls, a nice car in the drive of the nice house, good clothes and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with the way that life 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 Officers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090005</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jacqueline Walker|title=Pilgrim State|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I was intrigued and touched by Jacqueline Walker's beautiful memoir of her childhood in Jamaica and London in the 1960's. This is a book inevitably compared with Andrea Levy's ''Small Island''. It follows similar ground, but the main difference and great strength, is that it's the real narrative of mother and daughter. As a girl I was familiar with areas of London where Jackie Walker lived and heard some members of my family denigrate Caribbean immigrants. From this memoir, I've garnered much about the lived experience of my less advantaged contemporaries.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340960809</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kate Ivor George Williams|title=Becoming Queen|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=It's a story which has been told by many authors during the last century. The Victorian age, or at any rate the woman who gave her name to the era, came about largely if not wholly because of a crisis of sorts among King George III's family. By the time his seven surviving sons reached middle age, they had managed to produce one legitimate child between them, namely Princess Charlotte. Her unexpected death, and the need for at least some if not all of the others to do their dynastic duty and produce an heir or two, resulted in an undignified mass scramble to the altar. Edward, Duke of Kent won the lottery. It was he and his wife, a widow with two small children by her first marriage, whose daughter Victoria became the saviour of the royal succession.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099451824</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Martyn Downer|title=The Queen's Knight|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The title sounds more indicative of a novel by [[:Category:Dorothy Dunnett|Dorothy Dunnett]] or Jean Plaidy than a biography. Then a brief prologue starts the story at the very end, when Queen Victoria receives the unexpected news of the death of Sir Howard Elphinstone. An equally short first chapter gives us a glimpse of the man some thirty years earlier in the thick of battle at the Crimea. Only after that do we 'reach' his birth in 1829. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and it's a good way of introducing this very interesting life. As the husband of his subject's great-great-granddaughter, the author is well qualified to write it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>055215508X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=William Coxe and Peter Danckwerts (Editor)|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>}} {{newreview|author=Barney Hoskyns|title=Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Born and raised in Los Angeles, Tom Waits probably enjoys a status comparable to the UK's Richard Thompson. He has never sold out to a mass pop audience, preferring instead to sustain an engagingly low-key career for over 30 years, feted by critics, fellow artists and a cult following while only achieving modest record sales. While his 80s albums 'Swordfishtrombones' and 'Rain Dogs' are regarded as among the finest of the decade, most of his royalties have come through cover versions of his songs. Two, 'Downtown Train' and 'Tom Traubert's Blues', have been Top 10 hits for Rod Stewart, who once said that they paid for the swimming pool in Tom's garden, while in his early days the Eagles gave him a boost by recording 'Ol' 55' on their third album.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571235522</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Victor Schoelcher (Author), Anton de Moresco (Editor), James Lowe (Translator) |title=The Life of Handel
|rating=4
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|summary=Although he is probably best remembered for his active role in In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the abolition 17th Regiment of slavery Foot. He was in command of the French colonies, troops and as convicts on board a campaigner for women's rightsship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, Victor Schoelcher Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. He was also not destined to live a noted musicologist. His biography long life, dying suddenly at the age of the composer Handel34 at Bangalore, first published leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in 1857a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but she was one of the first scholarly works on also responsible for the subject, and at convicts who worked the time it was generally regarded as one of the finest portraits of a musician or composer ever writtenland. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904799388</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain McCalmanPeacock_mountain|title=Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=A look at Darwin's journey on Into The BeagleMountain, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737266X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances Osborne|title=The Bolter|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=A Life in London just after the Great War must have been jolly, 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 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>}} {{newreview|author=Doris Kearns Goodwin|title=Team of Rivals|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyNan Shepherd|summary=This hefty tome, the cover tells us, is 'the book that inspired Barack Obama'. For what it's worth, Obama's name appears no less than nine times on the cover and spine, while Lincoln's appears only six, and that of the author a mere two.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043725</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Gribbin and Michael White|title=Darwin: A Life in ScienceCharlotte Peacock
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This straightforward Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and likeable biography of Charles Darwin charts so many books… I can understand the evolution of his theories of evolutionapproach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the myriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while providing solid insights into the man in the context of his upbringing, education like most other people I have my favourite genres, and favoured authors, and family life. Importantlywhile, it makes you want to like most other people I read ''On the Origin of the Species''reviews and follow up on what appeals, acting as I also have a primer for the ideas introduced in that famous volume.  ''Darwinthird-string to my reading bow: A 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 speculationrandomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847391494</amazonuk>
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{{newreview|author=Michael D Lemonick|title=The Georgian Star: How William Move on to [[Newest Business and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=No-one can ever look at the night skies above our heads as Galileo did. The light pollution covering so much of our planet makes it impossible to see nearly as much as he might. Conversely, he would have adored living in a time such as ours – with the technology to show him so much he couldn't see, so much he daren't dream of. Sitting happily between those two extremes was William Herschel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039306574X</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]

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