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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Selina Hastings1788360702|title=Charles, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham|rating=4.5|genre=Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|summary=These days, W. Somerset Maugham seems to be something of an anachronism. In his heyday, for much of a career which lasted from the end of the Victorian era to the 1950s, he was one of the most successful and widely read of all British writers, with his novels, short stories and plays spawning more film adaptations than any other author. Yet over the last thirty years or so he seems to have slipped from favour, as if his preoccupation with the Edwardian England in which he grew up and his end-of-empire settings are deeply embedded in an age we would rather forget. Moreover, as this very comprehensive biography demonstrates, he was not the most pleasant of individuals. The unhappy child, orphaned by the time he was ten, afflicted with a lifelong stammer and brought up by an aunt and uncle who showed him no affection, grew up to lead a long and unhappy life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719565553</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew McConnell Stott|title=The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain's Greatest ComedianEdzard Ernst

|summary=This book For over forty years, Prince Charles has won several prestigious awards, so my expectations were raised before I'd even opened the bookbeen an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. And of all the plaudits given on the back cover, my favourite was Simon Callows' '(A) great big Christmas pudding of a book ...' Stott has researched his subject thoroughly. First up, there's a Grimaldi family tree, a Prologue, an Introduction and all this before you get to the story properCharles, so to speak.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847677614</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Martin Davidson|title=The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My SS GrandfatherAlternative Prince's Secret Past and How Hitler Seduced a Generation|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Meet Martin Davidson. Now, when I start my reviews like that, normally it means he's critically assesses the main character, but he's not here. HePrince'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 warbased, except for many inflammatory, 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, as galling proof a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that your intel is ages out of dateJewell's diverse output. Ponder too the fact that you get reported Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the Nazis due published author's life, working to make a success of the most ridiculous slight of fortune. All your colleagues are dead or capturedlatest title, your equipment blown up and struggling 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 next in one of Europe's lastline. Jewell, and coldestdue diligence appropriately done, wildernessesagrees. And you have no idea whatsoever quite how bad this scenario is going to getthe result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847678459</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janet SoskiceMartha Leigh|title=Sisters Invisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating= 5|genre= Biography|summary= 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 complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found life. There is love in the Hidden Gospelshouse but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|isbn=1800460384}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=Fifty 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818256</amazonuk>}} {{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 ''walking is not 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 coversport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846142008</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{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 'Therepowerful's nothing between him and all the sensations the world has to give us'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841156795</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Donald Spoto|title=High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=In his defence, we must acknowledge Spotoinspiring'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 is an analysis of her film career: a consideration of the "Hollywood years".|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515377</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alison Maloney|title=St George: Let's Hear it for England!|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=I was a bit of a patriot, even when it wasnlife-changing't as fashionable as – although it is now becoming. Perhaps this is due to my once having played St. George in a Cub Scout celebration definitely the first two and getting only time will tell about the chance to personally slay the dragon in knitted chain mail with a plastic sword. In third – but clichés exist for a world where being English has become synonymous with football violence reason and the flag of St. George is being used by a political party condemned as racist, I'm not sure I can succinctly put it's perhaps unsurprising that more people celebrate St. Patrick's Day than St. George's Dayany better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848092628</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Douglas Rogers0241446732|title=The Last ResortOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena 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 first person to walk the name Constance Spry conjures up thoughts of flower arranging and books of recipes from mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a bygone era. Perhaps it was her misfortune that she died just before television could have made a celebrity of herminer, quarryman, as it did of the likes of Fanny Cradock and Nigella Lawsonshepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to name but twofor pleasure and adventure. Even soHis rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, she enjoyed a remarkably successful careerand its literary consequences, and the woman behind changed our view of the public face was no ordinary career woman, but quite an unconventional personalityworld''.|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, he was the only one to inherit any lasting artistic talent, which came from his father Max. The latter was a senior pathologist, member of the local Philharmonic Society, gifted singer, pianist and watercolour painter.|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 When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of whom might have become her husband - and possibly saved her handwritten notes from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butler, later Earl of Ormondhis journal, whom she was at one time intended to marry in order to settle a family dispute over the title and estates he didn't take much notice of the Earldom of Ormondit. After their marriage negotiations came to an end in At the face age of legal obstacles24, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to Graff didn't realise the Duke gravity 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 pages he was sealedholding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michele Monro1789016304|title=Matt Monro: The Singer's Singer|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=In terms of British chart statistics War 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 the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one 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 he ever really listened to.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848566182</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Caroline Moorehead |title=Dancing to the Precipice 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'', and at least three otherstestament of anguish, 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 endurance 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 Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from repeats on the UK Gold TV channelsPlymouth to Sydney, Australia: his wife and from occasional mentions in young son accompanied him. He was not destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at the context age of 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards'how great he would death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have been if only…' In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped their farm to manage, but she was also responsible for the 30-year-old sitcom favourite as a rising major star of the 80s convicts who would blossom into one of worked the great all-round stage actorsland. One year Two years later, he was deadshe would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454404</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der KistePeacock_mountain|title=SonsInto The Mountain, Servants and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's A Lifeof Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=Like Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have been written about Queen Victoriaapproach, but John Van der Kiste has taken I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the unusual step of using the men in her life to illuminate some dark corners which might myriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while, like most other wise people I have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her lifemy favourite genres, and favoured authors, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'sonwhile, servant or statesman' as promised by like most other people I read the title of the bookreviews and follow up on what appeals, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always I also have a man in her life who would, third-string to a greater or lesser extent, dominate hermy reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Maureen Emerson|title=Escape Move on 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 [[Newest Business 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>}}Finance Reviews]]