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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Frances Stonor Saunders|title=The Woman Who Shot Mussolini|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Most British titled families of the 19th and 20th centuries have produced their fair share of rebels. Yet few came as close to changing the course of European history as the Honourable Violet Gibson, one of eight children of Baron Ashbourne, a Protestant Anglo<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE--Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870s.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Josephine Wilkinson1788360702|title=The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Before her marriage to King Henry VIIICharles, Anne Boleyn had already been courted by three suitors, any of whom might have become her husband - and possibly saved her from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butler, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended to marry in order to settle a family dispute over the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came to an end in the face of legal obstacles, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberland. With a little help from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewAlternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Michele Monro|title=Matt Monro: The Singer's SingerEdzard Ernst|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=In terms of British chart statistics and record salesFor over forty years, Matt Monro never quite fulfilled his full potential. When measured against the achievements Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of contemporary ballad singers like Tom Jones alternative medicine and Engelbert Humperdinck, he fell some way shortcomplementary therapies. Yet the former Terry Parsons was a regular fixture on the light entertainment circuit''Charles, and overseas, particularly in Latin America and The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one of BritainPrince's most successful exports everopinions, beliefs and at one point he was aims against the biggest selling artist in Spain. His idol Frank Sinatra, to whom he was often compared, often said that Matt was the only British singer he ever really listened to.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848566182</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Caroline Moorehead |title=Dancing to the Precipice : Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French Revolution|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Two hundred years ago, with the fall background of the monarchy and the Napoleonic wars, France underwent one cataclysmic change after anotherscientific evidence. There were many who witnessed are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and experienced his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the volatile age at first hand, but few left reputation of a more detailed record than the subject man who is proud of this biography, Luciehis refusal to apply evidence-Henriette Dillonbased, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du Pinlogical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099490528</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=A.Roger Ekirch 1739805100|title=BirthrightLoving the Enemy: The True Story That Inspired Kidnapped|rating=4|genre=History|summary=They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and it is not unusual for novels to be based partly on fact. So it was Building bridges in the case of Robert Louis Stevenson's ''Kidnapped'', Sir Walter Scott's ''Guy Mannering'', and at least three others, all of which can point to the saga a time of James Annesley for inspiration.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393066150</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewwar|author=John Van der Kiste|title=William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious RevolutionAndrew March
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another ''meaningfulLoving the Enemy'' period – tells the Victorian era. The importance quite extraordinary story of William and Mary was completely overlooked author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in favour of a quick mention the early days of the fact that William wasn't Nazi regime in direct line of succession to the throne 1930s. Fred, a sensitive and Mary thoughtful man, had never wanted to marry him some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the first placetime. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as Fred'tabless attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah BakewellWill Brooker|title=How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer The Truth About Lisa Jewell
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I'Chance … really ve never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the way things happentwo meeting each other,' wrote Howard Beckas well, and shows how 2021 drew the Chicago School sociologisttwo closer and closer together. I visit Bookbag Towers with few preconceived ideas The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the next words of her latest book for reviewshe was reciting, and her being in a ''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 cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. IBrooker decides he'll allow myself d like nothing more than to fall for follow her through a quirky title or appealing coveryear in the published author's life, despite only working to make a smattering success of interest the latest title, and struggling with the next in the subject matterline. Just occasionally this wayJewell, due diligence appropriately done, I stumble on a golden nugget so fascinating and well-written that I realise how lucky I am to be a revieweragrees. I'm so pleased to have chanced upon And this inviting biography of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell!is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701178922</amazonuk>1529136024
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David BaldwinMartha Leigh|title=The Kingmaker's SistersInvisible Ink: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the RosesA Family Memoir|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=Due to the small amount of surviving personal sources, any Martha Leigh begins her book which purports to be talking about a biography of childhood spent in a 15-century subject slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is almost inevitably going to be more a 'Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life and times' than s work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of life. In There is love in the case of women who were sisters house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not sovereigns or consorts themselves, the lack of data will be even more acutefully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0750950765</amazonuk>1800460384
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue RoePolly Barton|title=The Private Lives of the ImpressionistsFifty Sounds
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=In Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the early 1860s question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a group of young Parisian artists were keen to exhibit their work, despite opposition from while and if the official art worldhadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. Their protests at being spurned by I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the Salon, answer to the French equivalent question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the Royal Academyquestion in the first essay, resulted in their paintings which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being shown at the rather disparagingly-named Salon des Refusés, where crowds and critics came to view - and jeer. When they held among other things, the first sound of their own exhibitions a few years later, one reviewer said that they 'seem to have declared war on beauty', while another assured his readers that every canvas must party where you 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 namesto introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099458349</amazonuk>1913097501
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Will BirchFrederic Gros|title=Ian Dury: The Definitive BiographyA Philosophy of Walking|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Ian Dury was always I confess I picked this one of up from the most individual, even contrary characters library in the musical worldmy pre-lockdown forage of random stuff. In a branch of showbiz where people often relied on good looks as a short cut Now I have to stardom, he was no oil painting. During go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the pub rock era, he pages I have marked and his group, the Blockheads, ploughed a lonely furrow which owed more return to its varying wisdom when I need to jazz-funk than rock'n'roll, and his songs extolled the virtues of characters from Billericay or Plaistow rather than those from Memphis or California. Some books draw you in slowly. Alongside the young punk rock upstarts with whom he competed for inches This one had me in the rock pressfirst two pages, he was comparatively middle-aged. As if that was wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not enough, in his own words childhood illness had left him a permanent sport'raspberry ripple'.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0283071036</amazonuk>1781688370
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark SimpsonSharon Blackie|title=Alastair Sim: The Star of Scrooge and the Belles of St Trinian'sIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=The mere mention of Alastair Sim conjures up visions of pictures made during the 1950s when I normally say that you can tell how much a more gentle humour was the order book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the dayone I've borrowed. Yet the man hated and did his best I want to avoid publicity, claiming that clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the person the public saw on screen revealed all that anybody needed to know first two and only time will tell about him. How he would have fared twenty years later in the age of third – but clichés exist for a more intrusive press, one cannot but wonderreason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0752453726</amazonuk>1912836017
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Crawford0241446732|title=The BardOur House is on Fire: Robert Burns - Scenes of a Family and a biographyPlanet in Crisis|ratingauthor=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=If Shakespeare is England's own BardMalena Ernman, the comparatively shortlived Robert Burns – who lived and worked nearly two centuries later – fulfils the equivalent role in Scottish iconography more than adequately. Yet as this very thorough biography demonstratesGreta Thunberg, there is much more to the man than the wordsmith of 'Auld Lang Syne' Beata Thunberg and 'Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844139301</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Linda Porter|title=Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine ParrSvante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Katherine Parr The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was the last an opera singer and arguably Svante Thunberg took on most of the most fortunate parenting of King Henry VIII's six wivestheir two daughters. Apart from Anne of ClevesThen eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, the speedily divorced 'Flanders mare'then nine years old, she struggled with what was the only one to survive himhappening. And while all six of the queens consort remain rather shadowy figuresIn such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, this biography gives it became clear to the impression family that she was probably the most intelligent and wellthey were ''burned-out people on a burned-rounded personality of them allout planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230710395</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Clayton0648684806|title=Clara Colby: The Richard Beckinsale StoryInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=A generation The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably knows Richard Beckinsale only from repeats determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just 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, who doted on the UK Gold TV channelsher and saw that she received a good education, both in and from occasional mentions out of school. She was the only child in the context of 'how great he would have been if only…' household and her childhood was glorious. In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the 30mid-year-old sitcom favourite west of the United States and life was hard, as a rising major star of Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the 80s who family. Clara would blossom into one of the great all-round stage actorsonly know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. One year laterAs the eldest girl, he a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was deada rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454404</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der Kiste1789017977|title=Sons, Servants Ronnie and Statesmen: The Men in Queen VictoriaHilda's Romance: Towards a New Life|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Like 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 of using the men in her life to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her life, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'son, servant or statesman' as promised by the title of the book, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always have a man in her life who would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Maureen Emerson|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>}} {{newreviewII|author=Sushila Anand |title=Daisy: The Lives and Loves of the Countess of WarwickWendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=Born Daisy Maynard in 1861, Ronnie Williams was the Countess son of Warwick lived a colourful life by any standardsThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. She was notoriously promiscuous, a spendthrift who did There's some doubt as to whether or not hesitate they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to try have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and provoke he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a royal scandal while, the family was quite well-to shore up her parlous finances, -do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and although she relished her five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle . One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the full, she spent several years fighting wholeheartedly for the pioneer socialists army at eighteen in Britain1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749909773</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael LewisPatti Smith|title=The Blind SideYear of the Monkey
|rating=4
|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
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{{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>
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{{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.
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{{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>
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{{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>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Lever0857058320|title=Me CheetaLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|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>
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{{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>
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{{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>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy Nicholas Williams_Captain|title=Idle Thoughts on Jerome K JeromeCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: A 150th Anniversary CelebrationHis Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams|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 In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of ''Three Men in a Boat''. This fascinating anthology, published on the 150th anniversary 17th Regiment of his birth, reminds us that there was far more to the man than that one admittedly enduring bookFoot.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956221203</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|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 He was nine? Was Hitler overly affected by his father dying in a time command of paternal disapproval, the troops and convicts on board a kind of Oedipal reaction ship sailing from Plymouth to being the man in the house making him suffer when she herself died? And can DianaSydney, 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 LongingsAustralia: 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 wife and soon gave it up in favour of writing poetry and essays in literatureyoung son accompanied him. Although his social circle included men such as Gladstone, Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning and Prince LeopoldHe was not destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at the most intellectual age of Queen Victoria's sons34 at Bangalore, leaving his books (which are not so well remembered today) might have been his sole claim widow to fame, had it not been for raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his passionate curiosity about the meaning of human life. If it had widow in a purpose, he was convinced, it could difficult position: not 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 thendid she have their farm to manage, 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'' but she 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 also responsible for the more successful, longer-lasting ''Punch'', it began with radical aspirations, intending ''to expose what'' [the editor] ''perceived to be convicts who worked the'' ''vanities of the elite social classes''land. However its satire was gently humorous rather than malicious, and almost everybody who was portrayed in its pages was flatteredTwo years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312535</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Piers DudgeonPeacock_mountain|title=Captivated: J.M. BarrieInto The Mountain, the Du Mauriers and the Dark Side A Life 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>}} {{newreviewNan Shepherd|author=Emma Charles|title=How Could He Do It?Charlotte Peacock
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyBiography|summary=Emma Charles was on the edge of thinking that she Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time 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 so many books… I can understand the girlsapproach, a nice car in the drive of the nice housebut I also think we sell ourselves short by it, good clothes and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with we sell the way that life was goingmyriad lesser-known authors short as well. Then her fifteen year old daughterSo while, Tamsinlike most other people I have my favourite genres, gave her a noteand favoured authors, couched in graphic termsand while, saying that her father had been sexually abusing her for like most other people I read the past five years.In moments the family's life fell apart. Gone were all the certainties, the hopes reviews and the expectations. In came the policefollow up on what appeals, Social Services and Child Protection OfficersI also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090005</amazonuk>
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