Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Martin Davidson1788360702|title=Charles, The Perfect NaziAlternative Prince: Uncovering My SS Grandfather's Secret Past and How Hitler Seduced a GenerationAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryBiography|summary=Meet Martin DavidsonFor over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. Now''Charles, when I start my reviews like that, normally it means heThe Alternative Prince''s critically assesses the main character, but hePrince's not here. He's big in the world of BBC History documentariesopinions, beliefs and grew up in aims against the UK, half Scottish and half German, knowing that many background of his older relatives lived through the Second World Warscientific evidence. Foremost among them was There are few instances of his German grandfather, Bruno Langbehn, beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of a man who would have been is proud of fighting age - in his 30s refusal to apply evidence- during the Third Reich. Nothing much was ever said about Bruno's own history during the war, except for many inflammatorybased, rising comments by Bruno himself. It took the old man logical reasoning to die for the truth to be admitted by Martin's mother - their forefather was in the SShis ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916161</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sjeng Scheijen1739805100|title=DiaghilevLoving the Enemy: A LifeBuilding bridges in a time of war|author=Andrew March

|summary=Sergey Diaghilev was one of ''Loving the towering figures in Enemy'' tells the artistic world quite extraordinary story of Russiaauthor Andrew March's grandparents, and indeed Europe, at who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the start early days of the 20th century. Born Nazi regime in 1872 the ambitious son of 1930s. Fred, a bankrupt vodka producer from Perm, sensitive 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 Tolstoythoughtful man, Zola, Tchaikovsky and Brahms. He worked his way into the ranks had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the cultural cognoscenti growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at St Petersburg and launched the itinerant troupe which would become the Ballets Russes, playing time. Fred's attempts to packed houses as far west as Britain separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and the United Statesconnections that lasted for a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681642</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David HowarthWill Brooker|title=We Die AloneThe Truth About Lisa Jewell

|summary=Consider taking a five day sail in a small fishing boat 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 height thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the North Sea from Shetlandtwo meeting each other, as well, to try and establish, train shows how 2021 drew the two closer and supply closer together. The meeting was some potentially vital anti-German resistance in the farunspecified combination, it seems, far north of occupied Norwayher anecdote about cup cakes, your homeland. Imagine the sight words of heavy naval parades where you intended her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to landattend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, as galling proof down the rabbit-hole that your intel is ages out of dateJewell's diverse output. Ponder too Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the fact that you get reported published author's life, working to make a success of the Nazis latest title, and struggling with the next in line. Jewell, due to diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the most ridiculous slight of fortuneresult. |isbn=1529136024}}{{Frontpage|author= Martha Leigh|title= Invisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating= 5|genre= Biography|summary= All your colleagues are dead or capturedMartha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, your equipment blown up with your trawler to keep it safe from Jerry hands, half your big toe has been shot offimmediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, and you're forced to go forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the run in one complete correspondence of Europethe philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's last, and coldest, wildernesseswork. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of life. And you have no idea whatsoever quite how bad this scenario There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is going to getthere.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847678459</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janet SoskicePolly Barton|title=Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden GospelsFifty Sounds

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Sisters of Sinai tells Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the story of two extraordinaryworld hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, Victorian women who unearthed an important early copy of I don't know the answer to the Gospels from a remote monastery question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in Egypt. It hardly seems possible that they organised and executed such remarkable feats respect of unaccompanied travel during an age the question in the first essay, which womenis on the sound 's freedom was hidebound by their status 'giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the inferior sex. Janet Soskice is well-placed as a feminist philosopher and theologian sound of ''every party where you have to explore their livesintroduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009954654X</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasha McElhoneFrederic Gros|title=After You: Letters A Philosophy of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father|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|genre=Biography|summary=The book jacket states that this is 'the untold story of an African family' and with a presidential photograph of Barack Obama, the book is certainly eye-catching. Along with, I'm sure, millions of others, I've read 'The Audacity Of Hope' and was charmed and blown away in almost equal measure, so I was keen to get started on this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092725</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stefan Klein|title=Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the WorldWalking

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=This excellent combination of science history and biography starts with I confess I picked this one up from the most populist and some library in my pre-lockdown forage of the most awkwardly scientificrandom stuff. Basically it throws modern-day science at Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the Mona Lisa, which pages I have marked and return to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you might think is a little unfair – can she cope with being analysed, and the neuroscience we now know used in interpreting her? Of course she can – she’s the world’s best-known masterpiece of Italian art, and she’s survived much worseslowly. Klein’s approach fully works, when we see also This one had me in the science da Vinci did know and that he worked on himselffirst two pages, which all helps us know partly wherein Gros explains why the truths of La Gioconda are still unknowable''walking is not a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0306818256</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreview|author=Valerie Grove|title=So Much To Tell|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Kaye Webb’s career would be the envy of many a young bookworm. From 1961 to 1978 she ran Puffin Books, the children’s division of Penguin. I still have some paperbacks from that time with “Kaye Webb – Editor” on the first page inside the front cover.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142008</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Matt MacAllester|title=Bittersweet: Lessons from my Mother's Kitchen|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Matt MacAllester is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, used to covering the horrors of war, but nothing prepared him for his investigation into the life and death of his mother Anne. In May 2005 Ann MacAllester died suddenly of a heart attack and her son was overwhelmed by grief. This might not sound unusual, but his mother had been largely absent from him for about a quarter of a century, trapped 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 David, his mother’s favourite cookery writer he sought to find his mother through the food she cooked.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408800942</amazonuk>}} {{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 us'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841156795</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Donald Spoto|title=High Society: Grace Kelly third – but clichés exist for a reason and Hollywood|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=In his defence, we must acknowledge SpotoI's subtitle. It underlines that this does m not in sure I can succinctly put it any way shape or form claim to be a biography of the American actress who become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. It is an analysis of her film career: a consideration of the "Hollywood years"better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099515377</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison Maloney0241446732|title=St GeorgeOur House is on 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='You have to learn to be hard men, to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'. Such did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies in Ronnie Williams was the 1930s. He probably did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with a broken neck, such is the lifetime son of difference between the two referencesThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. But that lifetime, There's some doubt as packed and varied as it was, is in the pages of this to whether or not they were ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082884</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Angela Thirlwell|title=Into The Framemarried or even Harry's birthdate: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown |rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Ford Madox Brown, he claimed to have been born in 1821 in Calais of a Scottish family, raised in France and Belgium before settling in England1863, was one of the foremost Victorian artists. Throughout his career but he was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and shared already many of their same ideals, style years older than Ethel and subject matter, though he never officially became might well have shaved a member of the groupfew years off his age.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701179023</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chris Skidmore|title=Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth For a while, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart |rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=When Elizabeth I ascended the throne family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in November 1558, everyone's dominant concern was the matter of her taking an appropriate husband 1929 Depression and securing the successionfive-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. The man most likely One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to become her husband was Robert Dudley, whom she made her Master of the Horse be well-turned-out and entrusted this would stay with considerable responsibility for her coronation festivitieshim throughout his life. The fact that he was already married to Amy Robsart did little to quell He joined the speculation, especially since she was believed to be dying of breast cancerarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297846507</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jad AdamsPatti Smith|title=Gandhi: Naked AmbitionYear of the Monkey

|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 SpryO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=The very mention of ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''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 first person to walk the likes of Fanny Cradock and Nigella Lawsonmountains alone, not because he had to name but two. Even sofor work, she enjoyed as a remarkably successful careerminer, quarryman, and the woman behind the public face was no ordinary career womanshepherd or pack-horse driver, but quite an unconventional personality.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230741819</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rob Chapman|title=Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head |rating=5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Roger Barrett, who later acquired the moniker 'Syd' (let's make him Syd from now on) was born in Cambridge in 1946. The fourth of five children, because he was the only one wanted to inherit any lasting artistic talent, which came from his father Maxfor pleasure and adventure. The latter was a senior pathologistHis rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, member changed our view of the local Philharmonic Society, gifted singer, pianist and watercolour painterworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238548</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances Stonor SaundersGraff_Find|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-Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870s.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFind Another Place|author=Josephine Wilkinson|title=The Early Loves of Anne BoleynBen 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 her24, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, 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 the achievements 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 t realise the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one gravity of Britain's most successful exports ever, and at one point he was 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 pages 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 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 Stevenson's ''Kidnapped'', Sir Walter Scott's ''Guy Mannering'', and at least three others, all of which can point to the saga of James Annesley for inspirationholding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393066150</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der Kiste1789016304|title=William War and MaryLove: 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 A family''meaningful'' period – the Victorian era. The importance s testament of William anguish, endurance and Mary was completely overlooked devotion 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 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=Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in 'Chance … really 'The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the way things war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen,' wrote Howard Beck, the Chicago School sociologistin a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. I visit Bookbag Towers with few preconceived ideas about Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the next book for review. I'll Amsterdammers would never allow myself what happened to fall for a quirky title or appealing cover, despite only a smattering of interest escalate in the subject matter. Just occasionally this waythat it did, I stumble on a golden nugget so fascinating and well-written that I realise how lucky I am to be a reviewerbut initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. IIt'm so pleased to have chanced upon this inviting biography s an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178922</amazonuk>individual tragedies.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Baldwin1786893452|title=The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Due to the small amount of surviving personal sources, any book which purports to be a biography of a 15-century subject is almost inevitably going to be more a 'life and times' than a life. In the case of women who were sisters but not sovereigns or consorts themselves, the lack of data will be even more acute.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750950765</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewUngrateful Refugee|author=Sue Roe|title=The Private Lives of the ImpressionistsDina Nayeri

|summary=In Here in the early 1860s West, we see news reports about immigrants on a group of young Parisian artists were keen to exhibit their workregular basis – some media welcoming them, despite opposition from the official art worldsome scaremongering about them. Their protests at being spurned But all of those stories are written by the Salonjournalists – almost always western, the French equivalent of the Royal Academyand almost always, resulted in their paintings being shown at no matter how deep the rather disparagingly-named Salon des Refusésinvestigative journalism they carry out, where crowds and critics came outsiders to view - the world and jeerthe situations that refugees find themselves in. When they held It's rare that we find out the journeys from the first of their own exhibitions refugees themselves – and this is a few years laterrare opportunity to do that, one reviewer said that they 'seem to have declared war on beauty'in this intelligent, while another assured his readers that every canvas must have been the powerful and moving work of some practical joker by Dina Nayeri -someone who had dipped his brushes was born in paint, smeared it onto yards the middle of canvasa revolution in Iran, and signed the result with several different namesfleeing to America as a ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099458349</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Will Birch0857058320|title=Ian Dury: The Definitive Biography|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Ian Dury was always one of the most individual, even contrary characters in the musical world. In a branch of showbiz where people often relied on good looks as a short cut to stardom, he was no oil painting. During the pub rock era, he and his group, the Blockheads, ploughed a lonely furrow which owed more 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. Alongside the young punk rock upstarts with whom he competed for inches in Lord Of All the rock press, he was comparatively middle-aged. As if that was not enough, in his own words childhood illness had left him a permanent 'raspberry ripple'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0283071036</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDead|author=Mark Simpson|title=Alastair Sim: The Star of Scrooge 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]]