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[[Category:Biography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christina Schmid1788360702|title=Always By My SideCharles, The Alternative Prince: Losing the love of my life and the fight to honour his memoryAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=2.54
|genre=Biography
|summary=On Halloween 2009 bomb disposal expert Olaf (Oz) Schmid became another mortality statistic from the conflict in AfghanistanFor over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. Many people enjoy magazines like ''HelloCharles, The Alternative Prince'' who will absorb critically assesses the stories of OzPrince's early years, how he met Christinaopinions, beliefs and aims against the family holidays, stories about both sets background of parents etcthe scientific evidence. But for me, this is like looking at someone else's personal photo album; even if you have a connection with the album's owner, after a while it becomes boring There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and lacks meaning. Although I wouldn't his relentless promotion of treatments which have had half no scientific support has done considerable damage to the inner strength and courage that Christina showed after the death reputation of a soul mate, the emphasis of ''Always By My Side'' man who is out proud of kilterhis refusal to apply evidence-based, the descriptions of life in Afghanistan and the subsequent campaign being almost lost in the family detaillogical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184605947X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Penelope Hughes-Hallett1739805100|title=The Immortal DinnerLoving the Enemy: A famous evening Building bridges in a time of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817war|author=Andrew March
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinary. But the host, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, was no ordinary artist. He was a friend of many of the major artistic and literary figures of the day, in addition to being an ambitious painter of historical scenes. Sadly, his ambition was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilities, one and a half centuries after his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as well.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Sara Turing
|title=Alan M Turing: Centenary Edition
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=June 2012 will see ''Loving the centenary of Enemy'' tells the birth quite extraordinary story of Alan Turingauthor Andrew March's grandparents, brilliant mathematician, the man who played a major part first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in breaking the Enigma codes early days of the Nazi regime in the Second World War and is widely thought to be the father of computer science1930s. To celebrate the anniversary Cambridge University Press have reprinted Fred, a short biography written by Turing's mother sensitive and included a memoir written by his older brotherthoughtful man, Johnhad some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the time. IFred'm rarely impressed by biographies written by [[No Ordinary Man by Dominic Carman|family members]] particularly when theys attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren're still coming to terms with their own grief, t universally successful but this book is startling he did make friendships and connections that lasted for what it says about the family members as much as for what it says about Alan Turinga lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1107020581</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sally E SvensonWill Brooker|title=Lily, Duchess of Marlborough (1854 - 1909): A Portrait with HusbandsThe Truth About Lisa Jewell|rating=45
|genre=Biography
|summary=The woman we will eventually come to know as LilyMeet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], Duchess one of Marlborough was born Eliza Warren Price in Troythe most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, New York in 1854one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. Her father hailed from Bluegrass Country in Kentucky This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and met his future wife (who was from Troy) in Washington DCcloser together. The family meeting was comfortably off some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of 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 attend), but not rich) and became part pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the Troyrabbit-hole that is Jewell's social elite when they returned to live therediverse output. Lily (as she became known) had an unremarkable childhood and youth but became wealthy though Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her marriage through a year in the published author's life, working to Louis Hammersleymake a success of the latest title, who died when she was twenty eight and left her a wealthy widowstruggling with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. His will would leave her legal problems which would simmer all her life and even after her own death twenty one years and two more husbands laterAnd this is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1457507765</amazonuk>1529136024
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jane BrownMartha Leigh|title=Lancelot 'Capability' BrownInvisible Ink: The Omnipotent Magician 1716-1783A Family Memoir|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=Among those who helped their contemporaries living through the Age of Enlightenment to see the world around them Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a different lightslightly eccentric, Brown was unquestionably one of the most influentialimmediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Having trained as Her father is a gardenerCambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as a young man he acquired an exhaustive knowledge edits the complete correspondence of plants and treesthe philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as of drainage and water managementhis life's work. To this was added Her mother is a rare ability to look at concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the dullest practicalities of gardens and landscapes, decide that they had 'capabilities' for improvement (hence the time-honoured epithet), and persuade life. There is love in the owner house but also darker undercurrents that a transformation was both possible and desirablechild does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845951794</amazonuk>1800460384
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Johanna AdorjanPolly Barton|title=An Exclusive LoveFifty Sounds
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=This moving memoir tells of Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the double suicide of both István (question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a Hungarianwhile and if the world hadn't gone into melt-Jewish form of Stephen) and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in Octoberdown I would have visited by now. The story is told by their granddaughterI may get there later this year, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with VeraI am not hopeful. And like Barton, with whom I don't know the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight answer to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in 1956. It ends with the police reports respect of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies in their bungalow question in the Charlottenlundfirst essay, a town of the Capital Region of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It which is on the charm and lyricism with sound ''giro' '' – which this tale is related which makes this fatefulshe describes as being, among other things, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorablethe sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>1913097501
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen BlumenthalFrederic Gros|title=Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought DifferentA Philosophy of Walking
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Framed by Jobs' iconic speech at a Stanford College graduation ceremony, and I confess I picked this one up from the three stories he told library in my pre-lockdown forage of random stuff. Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the students, about connecting the dots, love pages I have marked and loss, and mortality, this biography gives a succinct and balanced account of Jobs' life, his successes and his failures, his passions and his ideals, and his infamously polarized personalityreturn to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you in slowly. The author actively annotates This one had me in the backstory of Jobs with references from this speechfirst two pages, as well as future events, carefully chosen statistics, and Jobswherein Gros explains why '' own reminiscence, giving walking is not a rich context to his story. Jobssport' achievements are incredible and they're not simply down to his genius, but his attitudes towards life and his incredible charisma. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408832062</amazonuk>1781688370
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary M Talbot and Bryan TalbotSharon Blackie|title=Dotter of Her Father's EyesIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic NovelsBiography|summary=If thereI normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I's ve finished reading the one person able to produce a worthwhile potted history of James JoyceI's daughter, it should be Mary M Talbotve borrowed. SheI want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 's an eminent academic, and her father was a major Joycean scholar. Both females had parents with inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the same names too - James first two and Nora, both took to only time will tell about the stage when younger after going to dance school, third – but clichés exist for a reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it's the contrasts between them this volume subtly picks out rather than any similarities, in a dual biography painted by one person we know by now as more than able to produce a delightful graphic novel - [[:Category:Bryan Talbot|Bryan Talbot]]better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224096087</amazonuk>1912836017
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Holroyd0241446732|title=A Book Our House is on Fire: Scenes of Secretsa Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Illegitimate DaughtersGreta Thunberg, Absent FathersBeata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Picture the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptor, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridors of Lord Grimthorpe's mansionThe Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour of the balconies Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the coastal villa at Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants parenting of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrast, energetically inspired to passionate love affairstwo daughters. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, like E.M.ForsterBeata, Virginia Woolfthen nine years old, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West and then there struggled with what was that tempestuous iconoclast, Dhappening.H.Lawrence. Many In such lives were inspired by both landscape and lustcircumstances, fashioned by each otherit's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here we learn of talents and beauty that inspires artistic endeavournatural to seek a solution close to home, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. Shebut eventually, who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends in it became clear to the pages of annotated diaries which became family that they were ''A Book of Secretsburned-out people on a burned-out planet''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548941</amazonuk> If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colin Grant0648684806|title=I & IClara Colby: The Natural MysticsInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Just mention The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the word reggaeUSA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, and the name that nearly always springs she wasn't allowed to mind is that of Bob Marley sail with her parents and the Wailersthree brothers. The music has always been very much Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a product of the Jamaican culturegood education, nurtured both in years and out of turbulent historyschool. In this book Colin Grant, born She was the only child in Britain of Jamaican parentsthe household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, goes back deep into its roots, and her family had become pioneer farmers in the process examines the childhood lives mid-west of the Wailers’ three main personalitiesUnited States and life was hard, namely Bob Marleyas Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, Peter Toshhad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and Neville Livingstondied in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, better known as Bunny Wailer, to provide an account of the group – but much more than thata heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd1789017977|title=DickensRonnie and Hilda's Romance: A Memoir of Middle AgeTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=With publishers falling over each other in an effort Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to outdo each other have been born in celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth1863, it but he was perhaps inevitable that we should see already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a reappearance of what has become few years off his age. For a while, the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the modern standard life, by Peter Ackroyd1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. The 1200One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-page original was first published in 1990, while out and this 600-page abridged edition surfaced would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1994, and now makes another timely appearance1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099437090</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul HendricksonPatti Smith|title=Hemingway's Boat: Everything he loved in life, and lost, 1934-1961Year of the Monkey
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=This substantial volume is not exactly a full biography On the coast of Ernest Hemingway. In factSanta Cruz, it might almost have been subtitled ‘The rise and fall’. Its theme is more or less Patti Smith enters the second half lunar year of his lifethe monkey - one packed with mischief, from 1934sorrow, when he returned from an African safari and took delivery of his boat Pilarunexpected moments. In a stranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, to his tragic death 27 years later. Hendrickson intends it to be an account 's the year of the writer, bringing together monkey''. As Smith wanders the different elements coast of his Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life – fishing, friendship, wives - loss and family ageing are faced head- and above allon, naturally, his writingas it the shifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847921930</amazonuk>1526614758
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Bradford1912242052|title=Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our TimesO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=43|genre=BiographyArt|summary=As ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies of the Queen (published in 1996)miner, of her father George VIquarryman, and her daughter-inshepherd or pack-law Dianahorse driver, Sarah Bradford needs little introductionbut because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. At around 260 pages of textHis rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, this is barely half the length changed our view of her other titles, and probably aimed more at the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee marketworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mick O'SheaGraff_Find|title=Amy Winehouse: A Losing Game|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a sad book. Writing this review some five months after her death, now the immediate smoke has cleared, it is apparent from this book (as well as other general sources) that she was a gifted performer, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her for a lengthy career long after scores of aspiring X-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorous, more steady careers. After all, her idols had been not only near-contemporaries like Michael Jackson and Missy Elliott, but also those of an earlier generation such as the classic 1960s girl groups, as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, with whom she was thrilled to record a duet four months before she died.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Matthew Hollis|title=Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Most historians tend to refer to Edwardian England as the thirteen-year interlude between the Victorian era and the shots at Sarajevo which precipitated the First World War, an era of relative stability. However, there had been ominous rumblings from the new order of things during the two years or so prior to June 1914, particularly from a new spirit among the younger literary generation. The old Victorian writers, notably the uniquely terrible Poet Laureate Alfred Austin (doubtless a very good man, but an almost comically inept writer of verse) were dismissed as irredeemably old hat by the likes of Rupert Brooke and W.H. Davies. For a short time London was the poetry capital of the world, and the book opens with the opening in January 1913 of Harold Monro’s poetry bookshop in Bloomsbury, which rapidly became a magnet for the self-proclaimed Georgian poets and readers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571245986</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFind Another Place|author=Julia Blackburn|title=Thin Paths: Journeys in and Around an Italian Mountain VillageBen Graff|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Julia Blackburn had known Herman for many years, but they had drifted apart3. She put the postcard which she received from him in an album: it mentioned a cottage he had discovered in Liguria and which he was renovating. Some time later there was another postcard and an invitation to visit. Over time the cottage would become her home and Herman her husband. 'Thin Paths' is the stories of the people who inhabit this harsh, wild landscape and of the way in which the landscape has formed the people. The thin paths join the people and the places together in a way of life which is rare.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090682</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Erica Heller|title=Yossarian Slept Here|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=When Ben Graff'To live forever or die in the attempts grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, he didn' was the essential glory in life and living that is at the heart t take much notice of John Yossarian in [[Catch 22 by Joseph Heller|Catch 22]]it. This autobiography of At the daughter age of his creator24, Joseph Heller, reveals how Graff didn't realise the same excitement and joie de vivre suffused throughout gravity of the Heller family. The harebrained unpredictability, the madcap exploits and relationships bowl us through this book with terrific pace and vervepages he was holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570084</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chambers and Joan Bakewell1789016304|title=Chambers Biographical Dictionary|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=ItWar and Love: A family's now the ninth edition testament of this famous volume and that came as a bit of a shock when I glanced at the bookcase and realised that my copy dated back to 1974 and was still in regular use for a quick guide as to who might have been who. It's advertised as 'the greatanguish, the good, the not-so-great and the downright wicked' endurance and it's difficult to better that summary. It has eighteen thousand biographies and differs from ''Who's Who'' with it's thirty thousand entries devotion in that covers the dead as well as the living and the ''interesting'' rather than those who need to be included because they have achieved a certain position.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0550106936</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewoccupied Amsterdam|author=Claire Tomalin|title=Charles Dickens: A LifeMelanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Having already written biographies of Thomas Hardy Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and Jane Austenwas entranced by what she discovered, among others, to say nothing particularly in ''The Diary of a study of Dickens Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and his mistress Nelly Ternanseven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, Claire Tomalin is admirably qualified but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to produce happen in a major life of country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. 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 author Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to mark escalate in the bicentenary of his birth in 1812way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. (Sadly, she says this will be her last large-It's an atrocity on a vast scale book)but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917672</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jermaine Jackson1786893452|title=You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's EyesThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=It is inevitable that Here in the books West, we have already seen see news reports about Michael Jackson in immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the two years since his sudden passing will be merely investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to the tip of world and the icebergsituations that refugees find themselves in. Yet for those which comprise It's rare that we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in this intelligent, powerful and are based on firstmoving work by Dina Nayeri -hand knowledge someone who was born in the middle of his life and deatha revolution in Iran, there will surely be few if any fleeing to rival this account by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve DennisAmerica as a ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007435665</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham Holderness0857058320|title=Nine Lives of William ShakespeareLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=There ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a subtle irony journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the fact that the world’s best-known playwrightSpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, and possibly the most famous author of all timeCercas' great uncle, is a character about whom so little is known the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for certainthis dictator. Nevertheless, as we are looking The question at someone who died nearly 400 years ago, the indisputable documentary evidence centre of this book is whether it is bound possible for his great uncle to be lackinga hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441151850</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Isba1788037812|title=Dickens's WomenThe Fraternity of the Estranged: His Life and LovesThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=45
|genre=Biography
|summary=The subject of Originally passed in 1885, the several women law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the life nature of Charles Dickens might at first glance seem an unusual theme to build a biography aroundhomosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, but this fairly brief but penetrating book serves its purpose as wellas the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. The author’s foreword begins by telling us that Dickens Exploring the margins of society and studying homosexuality was a man who 'craved a love common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so unconditional that the yearning was unlikely publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to be satisfied in this worldthe scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, a man in thrall leading to a vision the milestone legalisation of a womanhood so idealized that it was incompatible with everyday domesticity'same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441107207</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bruce DuffyBuckland_Zoo|title=Disaster was my GodThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The life of Arthur Rimbaud must be one of the most outrageous in literary history, more scandalous than Wilde, more self-destructive than Malcolm Lowery, Rimbaud was the boy poet and iconoclast who took on the literary establishment at end of the nineteenth century and won. So Duffy's fictional account, based closely around the actual facts of Rimbaud's life, was bound to be an exciting and furious, and he doesn't disappoint. This is a difficult book to put down.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685273</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Paul Oppenheimer
|title=Machiavelli: A Life Beyond Ideology
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Machiavelli, 'the first philosopher to define politics as treachery', has probably been better known as an adjective, Machiavellian being a synonym for duplicity in statecraft, than as a historical person. Interestingly, the term 'Machiavel' became common in English usage as an adjective and noun around 1570, although none of his works were translated into the language for another seventy years or so after that.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847252214</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Roger Hutchinson
|title=The Silent Weaver
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=There is no question but that the story of Angus has all the right ingredients for a fascinating study. Taken from his Scottish Lowlands agricultural early childhood to the isolation of a Hebridean island of South Uist, joining the last ever horse platoon in the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, then mental breakdown and effective incarceration for almost all the rest of his life, he created some of the most unusual works of folk art that have existed this century. And Hutchison tackles every angle of this rich narrative, exploring the military thinking behind how horse regiments were to combat Hitler, through to the operations of mental health care in later twentieth century Scotland, and all points in between.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841589713</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Harry Thompson
|title=Tintin: Herge and His Creation
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=I love Tintin. I love his quiff and his innocence, his plus-fours and his foreign adventures, I love Snowy the dog and most of all I love Captain Haddock and the flamboyance of his blistering barnacles language. So I was thrilled to see a biography of the character and Hergé, his creator, and I picked it up with enthusiasm.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546726</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Stephen Games
|title=Pevsner: The Early Life: Germany and Art
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Nikolai Pewsner – the minor changes of name came as a young adult - was born in Saxony in 1902 into a Russian-Jewish family. Just too young to avoid having to take part in the war, he had studied art history at no less than four universities by the age of 22. He then became an assistant keeper at the Dresden Gemaldegalerie, and four years later he was appointed lecturer at Gottingen University.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441190937</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Nancy Mitford
|title=The Sun King
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes that you'll need no introduction to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he was four years old and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the reigns of Charles I, James II, William III and into the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne. He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Kelly
|title=Finding Poland
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Looking at any historical map of Poland anyone may see how its borders have changed over the centuries. Where will you find the Polish home? One answer must be that it is founded deep in the hearts of the Polish people who fought for the liberty and the integrity of the Polish homeland. Now consider the promontory of land around Vilnius, or Wilno as it was then known, which was contained inside Poland in 1921. It was an area in which the small market town of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings and just large enough to warrant a town hall, was situated. These wild borderlands – known as the Kresy - were fought over for centuries by Austrians, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. It was here that Matthew Kelly's great-grandfather, who had imbibed the values and élan of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach with his clever young wife, Hanna. They were deeply committed to progress through education and to peaceably raising their two little daughters. However, the dreadful and calamitous year of 1939, was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in the most cynical pact.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515997</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Cita Stelzer
|title=Dinner with Churchill: The Prime Minister's Tabletop Diplomacy
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Winston Churchill was never a man to don the hair shirt. A comfortable upbringing in the days when elaborate multiple courses were the done thing imbued in him from an early age a taste for the good things in life, and a bon viveur he remained until the very end. Throughout his life he loved his food, and until near the end of his life, his appetite and digestion remained excellent, whereas many men in their advancing years might have cut back a little.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595422</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=David Savage
|title=Furniture with Soul: Master Woodworkers and Their Craft
|rating=5
|genre=Crafts
|summary=David Savage is a master furniture maker and one of the artists featured in the book, so he is not – as he says himself – a neutral observer and nor can he be neutral in choosing who to include in the book. Having said that, the pictures alone will tell you that he has chosen people who create furniture of great beauty and – often – originality. It's the text that makes the book shine, though – as it seeks not to give a critical appreciation of each man and one woman's work, but to look at what makes them tick, what drives them on and how they have handled the good times as well as the bad. It is, if you like, ten in-depth biographies of artists who work in a common medium and ten shorter pieces about those we should look out for in the future.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>4770031211</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=D R Thorpe
|title=Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The great-grandson of As a crofter, and son-conservationist in-law of a DukeVictorian England before the term existed, Harold Macmillan Frank Buckland was born in London in 1894. Despite the well-to-do aristocratic background, his years as a young adult were marked by bad experiences in the trenches which left him with lifelong war wounds, and his early service as very much a Conservative Member man ahead of Parliament by the plight of the unemployed in his first constituency of Stocktontime. He had much in common with another future Prime MinisterSurgeon, Winston Churchill; both had American mothersnaturalist, veterinarian and both were mavericks who were elected as Conservatives but refused eccentric sums him up perfectly, and any biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to toe the party line too steadfastlytell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844135411</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert RossWilliams_Captain|title=Marty FeldmanCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: The Biography of a Comedy LegendHis Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Some years agoIn March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, I Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. He was given not destined to live a Penguin edition long life, dying suddenly at the age of Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards'death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, with what looked like an uniquely fearsome face on but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the front coverland. A year or two Two years later, I saw a photograph of Marty Feldman and was convinced he must have inspired it if not actually been the modelshe would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857683780</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bettany HughesPeacock_mountain|title=Into The Hemlock Cup: SocratesMountain, Athens and the Search for the Good A Lifeof Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so relevant little time and so long after his deathmany books… I can understand the approach, his life is something of a mystery. He didn't like to write things down, and so Hughes begins this book but I also think we sell ourselves short by saying that it may have something of a 'Socrates-sized hole' in it. What we do see is the city of Athens, and we sell the hugely important changes which were going on there myriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while Socrates was alive. In Athens we see the beginnings of democracy, the seedlings of some of the ideas that we take for granted todaylike most other people I have my favourite genres, such as freedom of speechand favoured authors, and while, like most other people I read the right to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development of modern values, reviews and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinkerfollow up on what appeals, he was I also have a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating third-string to be aroundmy reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554054</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|author=Stacy Schiff|title=Cleopatra: A Life|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Stacey Schiff's biography starts more of less from Cleopatra's infamous meeting with Caesar, where she sneaks into his rooms in a sack. This is one of the most popular images of Cleopatra in the public consciousness and Schiff happily refutes the image of her emerging as a well polished seductress, pointing out that anyone who had been carried in a sack for a considerable period of time will more likely be fairly dishevelled. Schiff takes us through from this moment up to Cleopatra's much dramatised death, and beyond, Move on to the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075353956X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tina Brown|title=The Diana Chronicles|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=''The Diana Chronicles'' was first published in 2007, ten years after Diana's untimely death (forgive me if I proffer information that you already know, but prior to reading this book, I was one of the small group of people in this country happily oblivious to the Princess Diana industry). The book has been re-released in shocking pink, white and gold livery, as a 'commemorative edition' to coincide with The Royal Wedding. A fanciful Foreword now imagines Diana's life and reaction to Will and Kate's marriage, had she survived.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099568357</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances Wilson|title=How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=As I read 'How to Survive the Titanic' I was conscious that we're only a matter of months away from the centenary of the sinking – and a slew of media to mark the occasion. Given that the subject has been mined extensively over the years it will be interesting to see whether there's anything new to be said about the tragedy. It's a subject which has always fascinated me – and it was with a sense of anticipation that I opened the book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809222</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew Crowther|title=Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan: His Life and Character|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Gilbert and Sullivan were the Rice and Lloyd Webber of the late Victorian era. Some might regard their work as slightly dated these days, especially the satirical lyrics which were so much a product of their time, but their appeal has never really faded and it surely never will.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752455893</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=D J Taylor|title=Thackeray|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Today, William Makepeace Thackeray is remembered almost exclusively as the writer of 'Vanity Fair', considered as among the greatest novels of its time. Yet he was a prolific writer, also responsible for 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes', as well as several sketches, essays and much poetry. However most of his work is largely forgotten today, while as a person he remains little known, and he has been somewhat overshadowed by his better-known contemporary, old friend [[Newest Business and rival Charles Dickens, born one year later. This biography does an excellent job in rescuing him from such semi-obscurity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099563258</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]

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