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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sjeng Scheijen1788360702|title=DiaghilevCharles, The Alternative Prince: A LifeAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=4.5

|summary=Sergey Diaghilev was one For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the towering figures in the artistic world of RussiaPrince's opinions, beliefs and indeed Europe, at aims against the start background of the 20th centuryscientific evidence. Born in 1872 the ambitious son There are few instances of a bankrupt vodka producer from Perm, and a mother who died a few days later probably from puerperal fever, by his early twenties he was on close terms with such names as Tolstoy, Zola, Tchaikovsky beliefs being vindicated and Brahms. He worked his way into the ranks relentless promotion of the cultural cognoscenti at St Petersburg and launched the itinerant troupe treatments which would become have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the Ballets Russesreputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, playing logical reasoning to packed houses as far west as Britain and the United Stateshis ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681642</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Howarth1739805100|title=We Die Alone|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Consider taking a five day sail Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a small fishing boat the height of the North Sea from Shetland, to try and establish, train and supply some potentially vital anti-German resistance in the far, far north of occupied Norway, your homeland. Imagine the sight of heavy naval parades where you intended to land, as galling proof that your intel is ages out of date. Ponder too the fact that you get reported to the Nazis due to the most ridiculous slight time of fortune. All your colleagues are dead or captured, your equipment blown up with your trawler to keep it safe from Jerry hands, half your big toe has been shot off, and you're forced to go on the run in one of Europe's last, and coldest, wildernesses. And you have no idea whatsoever quite how bad this scenario is going to get.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678459</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewwar|author=Janet Soskice|title=Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden GospelsAndrew March

|summary=Sisters of Sinai ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of two extraordinaryauthor Andrew March's grandparents, Victorian women who unearthed an important first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the early copy days of the Gospels from a remote monastery Nazi regime in Egyptthe 1930s. It hardly seems possible that they organised Fred, a sensitive and executed such remarkable feats thoughtful man, had some vague ideas of unaccompanied travel during an age "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in which womenEurope at the time. Fred's freedom was hidebound by their status as the inferior sex. Janet Soskice is well-placed as attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a feminist philosopher and theologian to explore their liveslifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954654X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasha McElhoneWill Brooker|title=After You: Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and FatherThe Truth About Lisa Jewell|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=What would you do if, without warning, your brilliant, loving, superman partner died from a catastrophic heart event at the untimely age of 43, leaving you with two young boys and a third on the way? Most of us would probably reach for the Valium and book a very long course of counseling. But Natascha McElhone couldn't because she was already stretched, juggling a busy transatlantic career as an actress as well as caring for her sparky young family. Coping as a single parent left no spare time for self-indulgence; within months she had a new baby as well. So she found her own way, grabbing instead at odd moments to write in her well-established diary. These short entries … e-mails, almost … to her dead husband form the basis of 'After You'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919098</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Firstbrook|title=The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family|rating=4

|summary=The book jacket states that this is Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the untold story thousands of an African family' 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 two closer and with a presidential photograph closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of Barack Obamaher anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book is she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly eyea get-catching. Along withup never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), I'm surebut pulled Brooker, millions a professor of otherscultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, Idown the rabbit-hole that is Jewell've read s diverse output. Brooker decides he'The Audacity Of Hoped like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author' s life, working to make a success of the latest title, and was charmed and blown away struggling with the next in almost equal measureline. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, so I was keen to get started on agrees. And this bookis the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848092725</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stefan KleinMartha Leigh|title=Leonardo's LegacyInvisible Ink: How Da Vinci Reinvented the WorldA Family Memoir|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=This excellent combination of science history and biography starts with 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 most populist and some complete correspondence of the most awkwardly scientific. Basically it throws modernphilosopher Jean-day science at the Mona LisaJacques Rousseau, which you might think his life's work. Her mother is a little unfair – can she cope with being analysed, and the neuroscience we now know used concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in interpreting her? Of course she can – she’s the world’s best-known masterpiece practicalities of Italian art, and she’s survived much worselife. Klein’s approach fully works, when we see There is love in the house but also the science da Vinci did know and darker undercurrents that he worked on himself, which all helps us know partly why the truths of La Gioconda are still unknowablea child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0306818256</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Valerie GrovePolly Barton|title=So Much To TellFifty Sounds

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Kaye Webb’s career would be Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the envy of many question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a young bookwormwhile and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. From 1961 I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to 1978 the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she ran Puffin Booksdescribes as being, among other things, the children’s division sound of Penguin. I still ''every party where you have some paperbacks from that time with “Kaye Webb – Editor” on the first page inside the front coverto introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846142008</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matt MacAllesterFrederic Gros|title=Bittersweet: Lessons from my Mother's KitchenA Philosophy of Walking|rating=45|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Matt MacAllester is a PulitzerI confess I picked this one up from the library in my pre-prize winning journalist, used lockdown forage of random stuff. Now I have to covering the horrors of war, but nothing prepared him for his investigation into go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the life pages I have marked and death of his mother Annereturn to its varying wisdom when I need to. In May 2005 Ann MacAllester died suddenly of a heart attack and her son was overwhelmed by grief Some books draw you in slowly. This might not sound unusual, but his mother one had been largely absent from him for about a quarter of a century, trapped me in her own private world of madness. His earliest memories were of an idyllic childhood, where wonderful food was always at the centre of family life and with the help of Elizabeth Davidfirst two pages, his mother’s favourite cookery writer he sought to find his mother through the food she cookedwherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408800942</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris Welch and Lucian RandallSharon Blackie|title=Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian StanshallIf Women Rose Rooted

|genre=Biography|summary=Redheads, they I normally say, feel more pain than the rest of usthat you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. They may Perhaps an even have a layer greater measure of skin too few. However literally true this might be, it certainly seems impact is setting out to be buy my own copy before I've finished reading the case for Vivian Stanshallone I've borrowed. As his second wife says in this excellent book, I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'Therelife-changing's nothing between him – although it is definitely the first two and all only time will tell about the sensations the world has to give usthird – but clichés exist for a reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841156795</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donald Spoto0241446732|title=High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=In his defence, we must acknowledge Spoto's subtitle. It underlines that this does not in any way shape or form claim to be a biography of the American actress who become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. It Our House is an analysis of her film career: a consideration of the "Hollywood years".|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515377</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alison Maloney|title=St Georgeon Fire: Let's Hear it for England!|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=I was a bit Scenes of a patriot, even when it wasn't as fashionable as it is now becoming. Perhaps this is due to my once having played St. George in Family and a Cub Scout celebration and getting the chance to personally slay the dragon Planet in knitted chain mail with a plastic sword. In a world where being English has become synonymous with football violence and the flag of St. George is being used by a political party condemned as racist, it's perhaps unsurprising that more people celebrate St. Patrick's Day than St. George's Day.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092628</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewCrisis|author=Douglas Rogers|title=The Last ResortMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Author Douglas Rogers is a Zimbabwean who moved awayfrom The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the country many parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, then nine years agoold, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, but has never been able it's natural to persuadehis parents – two white farmers, Lyn and Roz – seek a solution close to follow him out oftheir homelandhome, despite the resettlement policies of Robert Mugabebut eventually,it became clear to the hyperfamily that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-inflation, and the corruption in the countryout planet''. Instead, thepair just wanted If they were to stay on the farm welcoming people find a way to Drifters,live happily again their backpackers' lodgesolution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906021910</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tracy Kidder0648684806|title=Strength in What RemainsClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick'Strength in What Remains' is s life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the inspirational account time she was just three-years-old but because of Deogratiassome childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, a man who has fled from the genocide doted on her and civil war saw that she received a good education, both in Burundi (just south and out of school. She was the equator only child in East Central Africa, bordering Rwanda)the household and her childhood was glorious. He escapes to New York By contrast, out her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of fear the United States and want of a safer life; was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only his new found American life isn't quite what it promisedknow 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. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>186197857X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Catrine Clay1789017977|title=TrautmannRonnie and Hilda's JourneyRomance: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup LegendTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There'You have s some doubt as to learn whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to be hard menhave been born in 1863, to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. Such did Hitler say at For a while, the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1930s1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. He probably One thing he did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with a broken neck, such is the lifetime of difference between the two referenceshim throughout his life. But that lifetime, as packed and varied as it was, is He joined the army at eighteen in the pages of this ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured book1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082884</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Angela Thirlwell|title=Into The Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown |rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Ford Madox Brown, born in 1821 in Calais of a Scottish family, raised in France and Belgium before settling in England, was one of the foremost Victorian artists. Throughout his career he was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and shared many of their same ideals, style and subject matter, though he never officially became a member of the group.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701179023</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris SkidmorePatti Smith|title=Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate Year of Amy Robsart |rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in November 1558, everyone's dominant concern was the matter of her taking an appropriate husband and securing the succession. The man most likely to become her husband was Robert Dudley, whom she made her Master of the Horse and entrusted with considerable responsibility for her coronation festivities. The fact that he was already married to Amy Robsart did little to quell the speculation, especially since she was believed to be dying of breast cancer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297846507</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jad Adams|title=Gandhi: Naked AmbitionMonkey

|summary=Until I read this bookOn the coast of Santa Cruz, Mohandas Karamchand (or Mahatma for short) Gandhi had always been a very shadowy figure. I was familiar with Patti Smith enters the picture lunar year of the loinclothmonkey -clad man who fell victim to an assassinone packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's bullet shortly words, ''Anything is possible: after Indian independenceall, but knew little moreit's the year of the monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849162107</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Shephard1912242052|title=The Surprising Life of Constance Spry|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The very mention of the name Constance Spry conjures up thoughts of flower arranging and books of recipes from a bygone era. Perhaps it was her misfortune that she died just before television could have made a celebrity of her, as it did of the likes of Fanny Cradock and Nigella Lawson, to name but two. Even so, she enjoyed a remarkably successful career, and the woman behind the public face was no ordinary career woman, but quite an unconventional personality.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230741819</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewO Joy for me!|author=Rob Chapman|title=Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head Keir Davidson|rating=53|genre=EntertainmentArt|summary=Roger Barrett, who later acquired the moniker 'Syd' (letOh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''s make him Syd from now on) was born in Cambridge in 1946. The fourth of five childrenthe first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he was the only one had to inherit any lasting artistic talentfor work, which came from his father Max. The latter was as a senior pathologistminer, member of the local Philharmonic Societyquarryman, gifted singershepherd or pack-horse driver, pianist but because he wanted to for pleasure and watercolour painteradventure.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238548</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances Stonor Saunders|title=The Woman Who Shot Mussolini|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Most British titled families of the 19th His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and 20th centuries have produced their fair share its literary consequences, changed our view 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-Irish peer and MP in Disraeliworld''s government during the 1870s.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Josephine WilkinsonGraff_Find|title=The Early Loves of Anne BoleynFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff

|genre=HistoryAutobiography|summary=Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, 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 When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him 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 plastic folder of Northumberland. With a little help handwritten notes from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his sonjournal, insisted that any idea he didn't take much notice of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwithit. Soon after this At the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured age of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign24, and her destiny was sealed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michele Monro|title=Matt Monro: The SingerGraff didn's Singer|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=In terms of British chart statistics and record sales, Matt Monro never quite fulfilled his full potential. When measured against t realise the achievements gravity of contemporary ballad singers like Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, he fell some way short. Yet the former Terry Parsons was a regular fixture on the light entertainment circuit, and overseas, particularly in Latin America and the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one of Britain's most successful exports ever, and at one point pages he was the biggest selling artist in Spainholding. 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>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caroline Moorehead 1789016304|title=Dancing to the Precipice War and Love: Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French Revolution|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Two hundred years ago, with the fall of the monarchy and the Napoleonic wars, France underwent one cataclysmic change after another. There were many who witnessed and experienced the volatile age at first hand, but few left a more detailed record than the subject of this biography, Lucie-Henriette Dillon, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du Pin.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099490528</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=A.Roger Ekirch |title=Birthright: 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 in the case of Robert Louis Stevensonfamily's ''Kidnapped'', Sir Walter Scott's ''Guy Mannering''testament of anguish, endurance and at least three others, all of which can point to the saga of James Annesley for inspiration.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393066150</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Van der Kiste|title=William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution|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 ''meaningful'' period – the Victorian era. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession to the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him devotion in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewoccupied Amsterdam|author=Sarah Bakewell|title=How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer Melanie Martin

|summary='Chance … really the way things happen,' wrote Howard Beck, the Chicago School sociologist. I visit Bookbag Towers with few preconceived ideas Melanie Martin read about the next book for review. I'll allow myself what happened to fall for a quirky title or appealing coverDutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, despite only a smattering of interest particularly 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 'The Diary of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178922</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Baldwin|title=The KingmakerAnn Frank'' but then realised that her own family's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the Wars of city during the Roses|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Due to the small amount of surviving personal sourceswar years, any book which purports but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to be happen in a biography of a 15-century subject is almost inevitably going country with liberal values who were resistant to be more a 'life and times' than a lifeGerman occupation. In Most people believed that the case of women occupation could never happen: even those who were sisters but not sovereigns or consorts themselves, thought that the lack of data will be even more acute.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750950765</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sue Roe|title=The Private Lives of Germans might reach the Impressionists|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=In the early 1860s a group of young Parisian artists city were keen to exhibit their workconvinced that they would soon be pushed back, despite opposition from that the official art world. Their protests at being spurned by Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the Salonway that it did, but initial protests melted away as the French equivalent of the Royal Academy, resulted in their paintings being shown at the rather disparagingly-named Salon des Refusés, where crowds and critics came to view - and jeerorganisers became more circumspect. When they held the first of their own exhibitions a few years later, one reviewer said that they It'seem to have declared war s an atrocity on beauty', while another assured his readers that every canvas must have been the work a vast scale but made up of tens of some practical joker who had dipped his brushes in paint, smeared it onto yards thousands of canvas, and signed the result with several different namesindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099458349</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Will Birch1786893452|title=Ian Dury: The Definitive BiographyUngrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=Ian Dury was always one of Here in the most individualWest, even contrary characters in the musical world. In a branch of showbiz where people often relied we see news reports about immigrants on good looks as a short cut to stardomregular basis – some media welcoming them, he was no oil paintingsome scaremongering about them. During the pub rock eraBut all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, he and his groupalmost always, no matter how deep the Blockheadsinvestigative journalism they carry out, ploughed a lonely furrow which owed more outsiders to jazz-funk than rockthe world and the situations that refugees find themselves in. It'n'roll, and his songs extolled s rare that we find out the virtues of characters from Billericay or Plaistow rather than those journeys from Memphis or California. Alongside the young punk rock upstarts with whom he competed for inches refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in the rock pressthis intelligent, he powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was comparatively born in the middle-aged. As if that was not enoughof a revolution in Iran, in his own words childhood illness had left him fleeing to America as a permanent 'raspberry ripple'ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0283071036</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Simpson0857058320|title=Alastair Sim: The Star of Scrooge Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and the Belles of St Trinian'sAnne McLean (translator)

|summary=The mere mention of Alastair Sim conjures up visions of pictures made during ''Lord Of All the 1950s when Dead'' is a more gentle humour was journey to uncover the order of the dayauthor's lost ancestor's life and death. Yet Cercas is searching for the man hated and did meaning behind his best to avoid publicitygreat uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, claiming that is the person figure who looms large over the public saw book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on screen revealed all that anybody needed to know about himwhy his uncle fought for this dictator. How he would have fared twenty years later in The question at the age centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a more intrusive press, one cannot but wonderhero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752453726</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Crawford1788037812|title=The BardFraternity of the Estranged: Robert Burns The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891- a biography1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=4.5

|summary=If Shakespeare is England's own BardOriginally passed in 1885, the comparatively shortlived Robert Burns – who lived and worked nearly two centuries later – fulfils the equivalent role law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in Scottish iconography more than adequatelyplace for 82 years. Yet as But during this very thorough biography demonstratestime, there is much more to restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the man than nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the wordsmith heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of 'Auld Lang Syne' society and 'Weestudying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, sleekitbut barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, cowrin'and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, tim'rous beastie'leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844139301</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Linda PorterBuckland_Zoo|title=Katherine The Man Who Ate the QueenZoo: The Remarkable Life Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of Katherine Parrnatural history|author=Richard Girling

|summary=Katherine Parr As a conservationist in Victorian England before the term existed, Frank Buckland was the last and arguably the most fortunate very much a man ahead of King Henry VIII's six wiveshis time. Apart from Anne of ClevesSurgeon, the speedily divorced 'Flanders mare'naturalist, she was the only one to survive veterinarian and eccentric sums him. And while all six of the queens consort remain rather shadowy figuresup perfectly, this biography gives the impression that she was probably the most intelligent and well-rounded personality of them allany biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230710395</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David ClaytonWilliams_Captain|title=The Richard Beckinsale StoryCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: His Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams

|summary=In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A generation probably knows Richard Beckinsale only from repeats on the UK Gold TV channels, and from occasional mentions in the context of 'how great he would have been if only…' In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped the 30-year-old sitcom favourite as a rising major star Edwards of the 80s who would blossom into one 17th Regiment of the great all-round stage actorsFoot. One year later, he He was dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454404</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Van der Kiste|title=Sons, Servants and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's 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 command of using the men in her life troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her lifeSydney, husband Australia: his wife and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'young sonaccompanied him. He was not destined to live a long life, servant or statesman' as promised by dying suddenly at the title age of the book34 at Bangalore, but he established a trendleaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Victoria, often regarded as Edwards' death left his widow in a difficult woman position: not only did she have their farm to pleasemanage, would always have a man in her life but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the land. Two years later she would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate hermarry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maureen EmersonPeacock_mountain|title=Escape to ProvenceInto The Mountain, A Life of Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=In Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the 1920s two womenapproach, one American, one British, settled in the south of Francebut I also think we sell ourselves short by it, both for different reasons. Elisabeth Starr had left her home in Philadelphia after an unhappy childhood and we sell the death, possibly suicide, of her fiancé, a nephew of the American President. Drawn to Paris, 'the chosen European city for the sophisticated and wellmyriad lesser-heeled of the New World', she worked known authors short as a nurse during the Great Warwell. So while, then moved to Provence where she made her home in an ancient stone houselike most other people I have my favourite genres, the Castelloand favoured authors, and took French citizenship. Winifred (Peggy) Fortescue was the wife of the Royal Librarian at Windsorwhile, who retired in 1926 with a knighthood and became a renowned (though hardly successful in financial terms) military historian. After the fall of like most other people I read the pound, it was hard for them to make ends meet in England, reviews and they were drawn to find a property in Provence partly by the lifestylefollow up on what appeals, partly by I also have a favourable exchange ratethird-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955832101</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Sushila Anand |title=Daisy: The Lives and Loves of the Countess of Warwick|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Born Daisy Maynard in 1861, the Countess of Warwick lived a colourful life by any standards. She was notoriously promiscuous, a spendthrift who did not hesitate to try and provoke a royal scandal to shore up her parlous finances, and although she relished her lifestyle to the full, she spent several years fighting wholeheartedly for the pioneer socialists in Britain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749909773</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michael Lewis|title=The Blind Side|rating=4|genre=Sport|summary=I think my husband was a little taken aback to see me curled up on the sofa engrossed in a book about American Football. I suppose I should admit that I didn't actually know it was going to be about American Football. Well, I knew it was about a boy who ''played'' American Football, but I'd thought that was just going to be the background story, you know, like in ''Jerry Maguire''. So the first chapter seemed 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 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 to social services at a young age.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039333838X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Billy Hopkins|title=Tommy's World|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 of Hardy's novels, two quite recently, and some of his poetry, but knowing very little about him as a person. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably to life in these pages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jenifer Roberts|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 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 'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively 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>}} {{newreview|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 Siblings|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=King George III was not the luckiest of English sovereigns. America, and then his sons, in that order, gave him no end of grief, and the last few years of his life were clouded by madness. It is thus often overlooked that, before these troubles arose to haunt this most conscientious monarch, he also had a thankless task in trying to control his siblings.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099428563</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tracy Borman |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 of her life through the women closest to her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082264</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Lever|title=Me Cheeta|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 Move 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, [[Newest Business and being the definitive account of his career.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706347</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]