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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julia Jones1788360702|title=Fifty Years In Charles, The Fiction FactoryAlternative Prince: The Working Life Of Herbert AllinghamAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Herbert Allingham was one For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the most prolific authors background of his timethe scientific evidence. Between 1886 There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his death in 1936 he was a busy writer relentless promotion of melodramatic serial stories in the mass-market halfpenny papers treatments which flourished at have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the turn reputation of a man who is proud of the century. Yet nothing he wrote was ever published in book form with his name refusal to itapply evidence-based, and the magazine proprietors made fortunes while their authors were the unsung heroes of the tradelogical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1899262075</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Doggett1739805100|title=The Man Who Sold The WorldLoving the Enemy: David Bowie And The 1970sBuilding bridges in a time of war|author=Andrew March
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=With hindsight, it’s difficult to argue with the oft-expressed opinion that David Bowie was the single most important rock musician of the 1970s. Having been a perpetual ‘one to watch’ from around 1966 onwards but with only one hit during that decade, ‘Space Oddity’, from 1972 onwards he went through several remarkable self-reinventions in musical style, with an uncanny knack of being able to pre-empt the next big trend. In examining his whole career but focusing largely on his work throughout that particular decade, Peter Doggett looks specifically at every song he recorded, including cover versions. There are also boxed-out features on each album, and articles on related topics such as ‘The Art of Minimalism’ and ‘The Heart of Plastic Soul’. He concludes that by 1979 the man’s extraordinary creativity was more or less spent and his subsequent output, successful though it may have been, was in effect treading water up to his ‘elegant, unannounced retirement’ in 2007.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548879</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Victoria Glendinning
|title=Raffles And the Golden Opportunity
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Although Raffles has gone down in history as ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the founder quite extraordinary story of Singapore his roots were far from grand. He had no advantages apart from his own drive and determination and his professional life began with a lowly clerkship with the East india Companyauthor Andrew March's grandparents, then as large and ungainly as many a government. When he who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went abroad on behalf to Dresden to teach in the early days of the Company he quickly learned Nazi regime in the merits of doing something 1930s. Fred, a sensitive and asking permission afterwardsthoughtful man, not least because had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the time taken . Fred's attempts to contact London separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and then receive connections that lasted for a reply. Even if all went well this could take the best part of a year - by which time the original question could well be academiclifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686032</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher Simon SykesWill Brooker|title=Hockney: The Biography, Volume 1, 1937-1975Truth About Lisa Jewell
|rating=5
|genre=Art
|summary=As one of the major names of British twentieth century art, David Hockney has always been a larger than life figure. Published to coincide with his 75th birthday, this is the first volume of a biography which tells his story up to 1975.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846057086</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Lois Banner
|title=Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=With the possible exception of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe is probably the most written-about deceased woman in twentieth-century history. The thirty-six years of her life and the manner of her death will no doubt continue to provide an opportunity for as many writers as they have since her sudden passing. After a decade of research Lois Banner, a Professor of History and Gender Studies at university in California, has added another weighty tome to the relevant shelves. As a self-styled pioneer of second-wave feminism and the new women’s history, she has some interesting insights to offer into her subject’s life as a gender role model.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408814102</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Penny Junor
|title=Prince William: Born to be King: An Intimate Portrait
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Prince William is Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the few people who genuinely needs no introductionthousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. He's been in This book starts with the public eye since his birth two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the interest is certain to increase rather than diminish as time goes bytwo closer and closer together. On The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the other hand he 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 pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that isJewell'' only thirtys diverse output. Is there really going to be enough to warrant a book and will it be anything Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than an attempt to cash in on his marriage in 2011 and the current interest follow her through a year in all things royal engendered by the Queenpublished author's Diamond Jubilee? You can see that I was something of a reluctant reader - my sympathies are republican rather than royalist and in addition Penny Junor is known life, working to be make a supporter success of Prince Charles in what can be described as the War of latest title, and struggling with the Walesesnext in line. Was Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this ''really'' going to be a book which I would enjoy?is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444720392</amazonuk>1529136024
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley HarrisonMartha Leigh|title=Sylvia PankhurstInvisible Ink: The Rebellious SuffragetteA Family Memoir|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=To some extent Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, the history of the suffragettes was also the history of the Pankhurst immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. SylviaHer father is a Cambridge don, born in 1882, was forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the second daughter of Dr Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst, and one of three sisters. The family had always been heavily politicised, Richard being a founder member complete correspondence of the Fabian Society alongside George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wellsphilosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the children had quite an austere upbringinghis life's work. When their father’s health took Her mother is a sudden turn concert pianist who practises for the worse in 1898, Emmeline and eldest daughter Christabel were abroad on business and Sylvia was left hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in charge of her younger siblings as well as having to nurse him, taking the full force practicalities of the shock when he died in her arms. With his passing the family were left strangely detached from each otherlife. His widow became heavily involved There is love in public work and political agitation, an increasingly remote mother from the young children who needed herhouse but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780950187</amazonuk>1800460384
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tracy BormanPolly Barton|title=Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror, first Queen of EnglandFifty Sounds
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Writing Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the biography of any woman who lived as long ago as the eleventh century, even someone as illustrious as question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a Queen, is a pretty thankless task. There will always be huge gaps in while and if the knowledge available. For example we do not know when Matilda was born, and likewise we do not world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have a precise date for her marriage, although we do know when she died. No lifelike images of her are known, though evidence suggests that she was quite short of staturevisited by now. In a male-dominated society, I may get there are approximate records of when her sons were bornlater this year, but I am not her daughtershopeful. Even more confusingly perhapsAnd like Barton, many I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the stories passed down to us throughout history are quite probably false. It question in the first essay, which is hardly surprising that this appears to be on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the first full-length life sound of her yet ''every party where you have to appear in Englishintroduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099549131</amazonuk>1913097501
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael RosenFrederic Gros|title=Fantastic Mr DahlA Philosophy of Walking
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionPolitics and Society|summary=Reading I confess I picked this book is rather like curling one up from the library in a deep, squishy armchair with a cup my pre-lockdown forage of cocoa and some squashed-fly biscuits while a favourite uncle chats to you about booksrandom stuff. He tells you interesting things about Roald Dahl's life, and then he discusses how those events may Now I have affected his writing, secure in to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the knowledge that you already know pages I have marked and love the stories. Just as important, he pauses in his chat from time return to time its varying wisdom when I need to ask your opinion — and it's clear he's really interested . Some books draw you in your answerslowly. Do you prefer This one had me in the original version of first two pages, wherein Gros explains why ''James and the Giant Peachwalking is not a sport'', or the one which was eventually published? Can you imagine how funny it would be to see your grandfather looking in through your bedroom window, like the BFG?.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141322136</amazonuk>1781688370
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leo McKinstrySharon Blackie|title=Jack Hobbs: England's Greatest CricketerIf Women Rose Rooted
|rating=5
|genre=SportBiography|summary=Back in the early 1920s, there were only three Test cricket playing nations; England, Australia and South AfricaI normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. In the summer Perhaps an even greater measure of 2012, both nations have been on tour; Australia recently beaten comprehensively at one day cricket and South Africa about impact is setting out to start a test series to determine buy my own copy before I've finished reading the best Test nation in the worldone I've borrowed. Given that history I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is repeating itself, it seems appropriate that definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for a new biography of Jack Hobbs, Englandreason and I's greatest run scorer and a man who repeatedly blunted the bowling attacks of both nations, should become available nowm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224083309</amazonuk>1912836017
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert K Massie0241446732|title=Catherine the GreatOur House is on Fire: Portrait Scenes of a WomanFamily and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Already known for major biographies The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of Nicholas the parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and Alexandratalking and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, and of Peter the Greatstruggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, Massie has now written an equally full and absorbing life of it became clear to the late eighteenthfamily that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-century reigning Empressout planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0679456724</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tim Ewart0648684806|title=Clara Colby: The Treasures of Queen ElizabethInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=3.54
|genre=Biography
|summary=Tim Ewart is Royal Correspondent for ITV News, which must be one The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the perfect starting points for writing a biography USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of the Queen as some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she celebrates remained with her diamond jubileegrandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She's was the only child in the second British monarch household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to achieve this landmark - join the other being Queen Victoriafamily. After sixty Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years on the throne - , had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and eighty six died in public life - there's childbirth not much which isn't known about long after Clara arrived. As the Queen eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and few pictures which haven't previously seen the light of day, but Ewart's book is marked out by the inclusion of memorabilia which will have Wisconsin was a freshness for many readersrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780970064</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennie Bond1789017977|title=ElizabethRonnie and Hilda's Romance: A Diamond Jubilee PortraitTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Jennie Bond was the BBC's Royal Correspondent for fourteen years from 1989 and covered a period of particular turbulence in the Royal family. It might not have been unprecedented but it was the first time that what was happening was so widely reported throughout the world. This book covers a much wider period with the emphasis being on pictures rather than words. It's a heavy, well-produced and lavishly-presented book of the type which would make a good present or souvenir of a visit to the United Kingdom.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847329608</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Christina Schmid
|title=Always By My Side: Losing the love of my life and the fight to honour his memory
|rating=2.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=On Halloween 2009 bomb disposal expert Olaf (Oz) Schmid became another mortality statistic from the conflict in Afghanistan. Many people enjoy magazines like ''Hello'' who will absorb the stories of Oz's early years, how he met Christina, the family holidays, stories about both sets of parents etc. 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 and lacks meaning. Although I wouldn't have had half the inner strength and courage that Christina showed after the death of a soul mate, the emphasis of ''Always By My Side'' is out of kilter, the descriptions of life in Afghanistan and the subsequent campaign being almost lost in the family detail.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184605947X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Penelope Hughes-Hallett
|title=The Immortal Dinner: A famous evening of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinaryRonnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. But the host, painter Benjamin Robert HaydonThere's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was no ordinary artistalready many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. He For a while, the family was a friend of many of quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the major artistic 1929 Depression and literary figures of the day, in addition five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to being an ambitious painter of historical scenesa very different lifestyle. Sadly, One thing he did inherit from his ambition father was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilities, one need to be well-turned-out and a half centuries after this would stay with him throughout his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as welllife. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TuringPatti Smith|title=Alan M Turing: Centenary EditionYear of the Monkey
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=June 2012 will see On the centenary coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the birth lunar year of Alan Turingthe monkey - one packed with mischief, brilliant mathematiciansorrow, the man who played a major part in breaking the Enigma codes in the Second World War and is widely thought to be the father of computer scienceunexpected moments. To celebrate the anniversary Cambridge University Press have reprinted In a short biography written by Turingstranger's mother and included a memoir written by his older brotherwords, John. I'm rarely impressed by biographies written by [[No Ordinary Man by Dominic Carman|family members]] particularly when they're still coming to terms with their own griefAnything is possible: after all, but this book is startling for what it says about 's the year of the family members as much 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 for what it says about Alan Turingthe shifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1107020581</amazonuk>1526614758
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sally E Svenson1912242052|title=Lily, Duchess of Marlborough (1854 - 1909): A Portrait with HusbandsO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=43|genre=BiographyArt|summary=The woman we will eventually come ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to know as Lily, Duchess of Marlborough was born Eliza Warren Price in Troywalk the mountains alone, New York in 1854. Her father hailed from Bluegrass Country in Kentucky and met his future wife (who was from Troy) in Washington DC. The family was comfortably off (but not rich) and became part of the Troy's social elite when they returned because he had to live there. Lily (for work, as she became known) had an unremarkable childhood and youth a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but became wealthy though her marriage because he wanted to Louis Hammersley, who died when she was twenty eight for pleasure and left her a wealthy widowadventure. His will would leave her legal problems which would simmer all her life rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and even after her own death twenty one years and two more husbands laterits literary consequences, changed our view of the world''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1457507765</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane BrownGraff_Find|title=Lancelot 'Capability' Brown: The Omnipotent Magician 1716-1783Find Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=Among those who helped their contemporaries living through the Age of Enlightenment to see the world around them in When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a different light, Brown was unquestionably one plastic folder of the most influential. Having trained as a gardenerhandwritten notes from his journal, as a young man he acquired an exhaustive knowledge of plants and trees, as well as didn't take much notice of drainage and water managementit. To this was added a rare ability to look at At the dullest age of gardens and landscapes24, decide that they had 'capabilitiesGraff didn' for improvement (hence t realise the time-honoured epithet), and persuade gravity of the owner that a transformation pages he was both possible and desirableholding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951794</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Johanna Adorjan1789016304|title=An Exclusive War and Love|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=This moving memoir tells : A family's testament of the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form of Stephen) and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in October. The story is told by their granddaughteranguish, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation endurance and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956. It ends with the police reports of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies devotion in their bungalow in the Charlottenlund, a town of the Capital Region of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fateful, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorable. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewoccupied Amsterdam|author=Karen Blumenthal|title=Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought DifferentMelanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Framed Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by Jobswhat she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' iconic speech at a Stanford College graduation ceremony, but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the three stories he told the students, about connecting city during the dotswar years, love but only five thousand survived and loss, and mortality, Martin could not understand how this biography gives could be allowed to happen in a succinct and balanced account of Jobs' lifecountry 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, his successes and his failures, his passions and his ideals, and his infamously polarized personality. The author actively annotates that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the backstory of Jobs with references from this speechway that it did, but initial protests melted away as well as future events, carefully chosen statistics, and Jobsthe organisers became more circumspect. It' own reminiscence, giving s an atrocity on a rich context to his story. Jobs' achievements are incredible and they're not simply down to his genius, vast scale but his attitudes towards life and his incredible charismamade up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408832062</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot1786893452|title=Dotter of Her Father's EyesThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=If there's one person able to produce a worthwhile potted history of James Joyce's daughter, it should be Mary M Talbot. She's an eminent academic, and her father was a major Joycean scholar. Both females had parents with the same names too - James and Nora, both took to the stage when younger after going to dance school, but 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]].
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096087</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Michael Holroyd
|title=A Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Picture the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptor, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridors of Lord Grimthorpe's mansion. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour of the balconies of the coastal villa at Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrast, energetically inspired to passionate love affairs. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous, like E.M.Forster, Virginia Woolf, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West and then there was that tempestuous iconoclast, D.H.Lawrence. Many such lives were inspired by both landscape and lust, fashioned by each other's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here we learn of talents and beauty that inspires artistic endeavour, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. She, who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends in the pages of annotated diaries which became ''A Book of Secrets''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548941</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Colin Grant
|title=I & I: The Natural Mystics
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=
Just mention the word reggae, and the name that nearly always springs to mind is that of Bob Marley and the Wailers. The music has always been very much a product of the Jamaican culture, nurtured in years of turbulent history. In this book Colin Grant, born in Britain of Jamaican parents, goes back deep into its roots, and in the process examines the childhood lives of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Neville Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer, to provide an account of the group – but much more than that.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Peter Ackroyd
|title=Dickens: A Memoir of Middle Age
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=
With publishers falling over each other in an effort to outdo each other in celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth, it was perhaps inevitable that we should see a reappearance of what has become the modern standard life, by Peter Ackroyd. The 1200-page original was first published in 1990, while this 600-page abridged edition surfaced in 1994, and now makes another timely appearance.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099437090</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Paul Hendrickson
|title=Hemingway's Boat: Everything he loved in life, and lost, 1934-1961
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=This substantial volume is not exactly a full biography of Ernest Hemingway. In fact, it might almost have been subtitled ‘The rise and fall’. Its theme is more or less the second half of his life, from 1934, when he returned from an African safari and took delivery of his boat Pilar, to his tragic death 27 years later. Hendrickson intends it to be an account of the writer, bringing together the different elements of his life – fishing, friendship, wives and family - and above all, naturally, his writing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847921930</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Sarah Bradford
|title=Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies of the Queen (published in 1996), of her father George VI, and her daughter-in-law Diana, Sarah Bradford needs little introduction. At around 260 pages of text, this is barely half the length of her other titles, and probably aimed more at the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee market.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Mick O'Shea
|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 Here in the thirteen-year interlude between the Victorian era and the shots at Sarajevo which precipitated the First World WarWest, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, an era of relative stabilitysome scaremongering about them. However, there had been ominous rumblings from the new order But all of things during the two years or so prior to June 1914those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, particularly from a new spirit among the younger literary generation. The old Victorian writersand almost always, notably no matter how deep the uniquely terrible Poet Laureate Alfred Austin (doubtless a very good maninvestigative journalism they carry out, but an almost comically inept writer of verse) were dismissed as irredeemably old hat by outsiders to the likes of Rupert Brooke world and W.H. Daviesthe situations that refugees find themselves in. For a short time London was It's rare that we find out the poetry capital of journeys from the worldrefugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the book opens with the opening in January 1913 middle of Harold Monro’s poetry bookshop a revolution in BloomsburyIran, which rapidly became fleeing to America as a magnet for the selften-year-proclaimed Georgian poets and readersold.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571245986</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julia Blackburn0857058320|title=Thin Paths: Journeys in Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Around an Italian Mountain VillageAnne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Julia Blackburn had known Herman for many years, but they had drifted apart. She put ''Lord Of All the postcard which she received from him in an album: it mentioned Dead'' is a cottage he had discovered in Liguria and which he was renovating. Some time later there was another postcard and an invitation journey to visit. Over time uncover the cottage would become her home author's lost ancestor's life and Herman her husbanddeath. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle'Thin Pathss death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the stories of figure who looms large over the people who inhabit book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this harsh, wild landscape and of the way in which the landscape has formed the peopledictator. The thin paths join question at the people and the places together in a way centre of life which this book is whether it is rarepossible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090682</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Erica Heller1788037812|title=Yossarian Slept HereThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary='To live forever or die in the attempt' was the essential glory in life and living that is at the heart of John Yossarian in [[Catch 22 by Joseph Heller|Catch 22]]. This autobiography of the daughter of his creator, Joseph Heller, reveals how the same excitement and joie de vivre suffused throughout the Heller family. The harebrained unpredictability, the madcap exploits and relationships bowl us through this book with terrific pace and verve.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570084</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Chambers and Joan Bakewell
|title=Chambers Biographical Dictionary
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=It's now Originally passed in 1885, the ninth edition of this famous volume and law that came as a bit of had made homosexual relations a shock when I glanced at the bookcase and realised that my copy dated back to 1974 and was still crime remained in regular use place for a quick guide as to who might have been who82 years. It's advertised as 'the greatBut during this time, the goodrestrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the not-so-great nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the downright wicked' and it's difficult to better that summaryheterosexual Havelock Ellis. It has eighteen thousand biographies Exploring the margins of society and differs from ''Who's Who'' with it's thirty thousand entries studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in that covers the dead as well as UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the living scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the ''interesting'' rather than those who need struggle for recognition and equality, leading to be included because they have achieved a certain positionthe milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0550106936</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Claire TomalinBuckland_Zoo|title=Charles DickensThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: A Life|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Having already written biographies of Thomas Hardy and Jane AustenFrank Buckland, among others, to say nothing forgotten hero of a study of Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan, Claire Tomalin is admirably qualified to produce a major life of the author to mark the bicentenary of his birth in 1812. (Sadly, she says this will be her last large-scale book).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917672</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewnatural history|author=Jermaine Jackson|title=You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's EyesRichard Girling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson As a conservationist in Victorian England before the two years since term existed, Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of his sudden passing will be merely the tip of the icebergtime. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge of his life and deathSurgeon, naturalist, there will surely be few if any to rival this account by his brother Jermaine veterinarian and ghostwriter Steve Dennis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007435665</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Graham Holderness|title=Nine Lives of William Shakespeare|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=There is a subtle irony in the fact that the world’s best-known playwrighteccentric sums him up perfectly, and possibly the most famous author of all time, any biographer is immediately presented with a character about whom so little is known for certain. Nevertheless, as we are looking at someone who died nearly 400 years ago, the indisputable documentary evidence is bound colourful tale to be lackingtell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441151850</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne IsbaWilliams_Captain|title=Dickens's WomenCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: His Military Life and LovesTimes|author=Ivor George Williams
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=The subject In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the several women 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the life of Charles Dickens might at first glance seem an unusual theme troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to build a biography aroundSydney, but this fairly brief but penetrating book serves its purpose wellAustralia: his wife and young son accompanied him. The author’s foreword begins by telling us that Dickens He was not destined to live a man who 'craved a love so unconditional that long life, dying suddenly at the yearning was unlikely age of 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to be satisfied raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in this world, a man in thrall difficult position: not only did she have their farm to a vision of a womanhood so idealized that it manage, but she was incompatible with everyday domesticity'also responsible for the convicts who worked the land. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441107207</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bruce DuffyPeacock_mountain|title=Disaster was my GodInto The Mountain, A Life of Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock
|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=MachiavelliMostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, 'and we sell the first philosopher to define politics myriad lesser-known authors short as treachery'well. So while, has probably been better known as an adjectivelike most other people I have my favourite genres, Machiavellian being a synonym for duplicity in statecraftand favoured authors, than as a historical person. Interestinglyand while, like most other people I read the term 'Machiavel' became common in English usage as an adjective reviews and noun around 1570follow up on what appeals, although none of his works were translated into the language for another seventy years or so after thatI also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.|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 Move on 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 [[Newest Business 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>}}Finance Reviews]]
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