Changes

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
5,269 bytes removed ,  16:37, 21 July 2022
no edit summary
[[Category:Biography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Morrison1788360702|title=Charles, The Love and Wars of Lina ProkofievAlternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This book is a biography For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and based largely on the letters of Lina Prokofievcomplementary therapies. Born Carlina Codina in Madrid in 1897''Charles, she spent most of her childhood in New York. After making her stage debut as a soprano in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’ under The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the name of Lina LluberaPrince's opinions, she met the Soviet composer beliefs and pianist Serge Prokofiev, best remembered for aims against the children’s musical fable ‘Peter and background of the Wolf’scientific evidence. They married in 1924 There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and for his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the first thirteen years reputation of a man who is proud of their marriage they lived in Parishis refusal to apply evidence-based, where two sons, Oleg and Svyatoslav, were born logical reasoning to them. Soon after moving to Moscow in 1936 their marriage fell apart. In 1941 he left her for a writer, Mira Mendelson, 24 years his junior, whom he married six years laterambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557313</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev1739805100|title=GiantsLoving the Enemy: The Dwarfs Building bridges in a time of Auschwitz: The Extraordinary Story of the Lilliput Troupewar|author=Andrew March
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The title ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of this book does of course carry a sense of ironyauthor Andrew March's grandparents, although we never quite know exactly how much. When a man of diminutive stature was born in rural Romania who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the 1860s nobody was to know what would happen to his lineage – there was no clue then that he would father ten children, and seven early days of them would inherit his genetic dwarfism. But history has pieced together all that followed, including the careers those children had as a performance troupe, belting out showtunes to their own accompaniment, and acting Nazi regime in their own tragi-comic skits. And then having the limelight stolen from them by the Nazis, and a transportation to Auschwitz1930s. And then being surprisingly savedFred, and given what passed as a cushty life, fed sensitive and togetherthoughtful man, but tortured had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the hands of the camp doctor, avidly researching anything he thought might shed clues on what singled out his Aryan racetime. Fred's genetic destiny. I say the amount of irony is unknown because we are not told exactly how short these little characters are – attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he, the doctor, would have known. As one of the more ominous sentences you'll read all year has it – 'Mengele had plans did make friendships and connections that lasted for them'a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849544646</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreview|author=Peter Ackroyd|title=Wilkie Collins|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=While Peter Ackroyd has published some extremely long books over the last few years, he has also been responsible for some commendably concise volumes as well. This life of the Victorian novelist is one of the latter, the latest in his series of 'Brief Lives', which have also included Chaucer, the painter Turner and [[Poe by Peter Ackroyd|Edgar Allan Poe]].|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287471</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gary RaymondWill Brooker|title=3-Minute JRR Tolkien: A Visual Biography of The World's Most Revered Fantasy WriterTruth About Lisa Jewell|rating=45
|genre=Biography
|summary=When something with such a built-in cult base as Tolkien books have gets transported into another mediumMeet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the manically interested fans thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have two reactions – to initially scoff at how nothing could compare read. This book starts with the originaltwo meeting each other, as well, and then to try shows how 2021 drew the two closer and buy everything worthwhile with even a tenuous link to the object of their affections, while avoiding the mountain of crud that could deluge the unwarycloser together. Such The meeting was some unspecified combination, it will be until seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the third movie part words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''The Hobbitblack lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' is safely behind us(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, and down the sixrabbit-film, three-month long Blu-Ray box set hole that is on the shelvesJewell's diverse output. Tolkien enthusiasts of course have Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a precarious situation – so great do they rightly hold year in the originalspublished author's life, and so low can the quality working to make a success of the spin-offs belatest title, there are some who will never be satisfiedand struggling with the next in line. But there remains the newcomerJewell, freshly inspired to find out moredue diligence appropriately done, and those at least will certainly be able to enjoy agrees. And this beginner's guide to [[:Category:J R R Tolkien|J R R Tolkien]]is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908005831</amazonuk>1529136024
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John FisherMartha Leigh|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!'Invisible Ink: A Life in Jokes and PicturesFamily Memoir|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=I grew up watching Tommy Cooper Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, and watching my dad do impressions of Tommy Cooperimmediately recognisable upper middle class English family. I thought he was hilarious (the real Tommy!) and loved Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his expressions typewriter as he repeatedly tried and failed to do magic tricks! This book is rather unusual as although it is a biography edits the complete correspondence of sortsthe philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, giving information about Tommyhis life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of life and his history . There is love in the world of entertainment, it isn't text heavy, and so mostly Tommy's story house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is told through photographs and picturesthere.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>1800460384
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter Unwin (editor)Polly Barton|title=Newcomers' Lives: The Story of Immigrants as Told in Obituaries from The TimesFifty Sounds
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Where do I think start? I was not could start with where Barton herself starts, with the only person who at first glance found question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the title and subworld hadn't gone into melt-title slightly misleadingdown I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. For me it conjured up visions And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of those who came across on the ‘Windrush’ question in 1948 and the life they led first essay, which is on settling in Britain the sound ''giro' '' andwhich she describes as being, perhapsamong other things, the lives sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.|isbn=1913097501}}{{Frontpage|author=Frederic Gros|title=A Philosophy of Walking|rating=5|genre= Politics and Society|summary= I confess I picked this one up from the 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 more famous (assuming there were some) pages I have marked and return to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you in slowly. This one had me in obituary formthe first two pages, wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1441159177</amazonuk>1781688370
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Artemis CooperSharon Blackie|title=Patrick Leigh Fermor: An AdventureIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The sub-title I 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 this biography impact is highly appropriate, for setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the ninety-six years of Patrick Leigh Fermor were packed with adventureone I've borrowed. Born in 1915, he was something of a maverick at school, intellectually gifted I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but perpetually naughty, and his punishments clichés exist for various refractions included suspensions a reason and even expulsionsI'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0719554497</amazonuk>1912836017
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Selina Guinness0241446732|title=The Crocodile by the DoorOur House is on Fire: The Story Scenes of a HouseFamily and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, a Farm Beata Thunberg and a FamilySvante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Selina Guinness lived at Tibradden as a child The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and in 2002 she talking and her husband-sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to-behome, Colin Grahambut eventually, moved back it became clear to the house when her elderly uncle Charles became frail. The surname might lead you to suspect family that there they were brewery millions in the background but this wasn't the case'burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. The couple If they were young academics and doing what needed to be done at Tibradden find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be done in addition to full-time jobsradical. The house was on the outskirts of Dublin - 'derelict fields' if you were a property developer or the last defence against the encroaching city if you were not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844881571</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harry Ricketts0648684806|title=Strange MeetingsClara Colby: The Lives of the Poets of the Great WarInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The majority path of recent books on Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the War Poets tend time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to focus on their lives during sail with her parents and immediately after the conflictthree brothers. This enterprising accountInstead, borrowing its name from the poem by Wilfred Owenshe remained with her grandparents, takes who doted on her and saw that she received a different approach good education, both in spanning a full fifty years or more. It begins with the first meeting of Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke at one out of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914school. Marsh She was a tireless supporter of modern painters the only child in the household and after that promising new writers, particularly poetsher childhood was glorious. The journeyBy contrast, or rather account her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of meetingsthe United States and life was hard, takes us as Clara was to the western front find out when she and back her grandparents eventually went to Englandjoin the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, culminating had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in a reunion of two of childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the longest-livedeldest girl, Sassoon a heavy burden would fall on Clara and David Jones, in 1964Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Callow1789017977|title=Charles LaughtonRonnie and Hilda's Romance: A Difficult ActorTowards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=Once a towering presence on stage and screen, Ronnie Williams was the star son of fifty films Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and forty playsEthel Wall. There'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, Charles Laughton seems largely forgotten these daysbut he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. As an actor of For a younger generation and keen admirer of his workwhile, Callow is the family was quite well placed -to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to bring him back adjust to the forea very different lifestyle. He notes in One thing he did inherit from his father was his preface that the man has increasingly slipped need to be well-turned-out of public consciousness, and even within this would stay with him throughout his own profession he is virtually unknown to anybody under life. He joined the age of forty|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581957</amazonuk>army at eighteen in 1942.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John SugdenPatti Smith|title=Nelson: A Dream Year of Glorythe Monkey|rating=54
|genre=Biography
|summary=I will admit that I didnOn the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, 't know what I was letting myself in for when I saw 'NelsonAnything is possible: A Dream after all, it's the year of Glorythe monkey' sitting on '. As Smith wanders the Bookbag shelfcoast of Santa Cruz in solitude, but I had just come back from Portsmouth she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and a wander around ageing are faced head-on the Victory, so as it was a bit hard to resistthe shifting political waters in America. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845951913</amazonuk>1526614758
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Chisholm1912242052|title=Wits and Wives: Dr Johnson in the Company of WomenO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=What's your mental image of a Great Writer? Most people would probably say 'Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the same thing: someone sitting in splendid isolationmountains alone, not because he had to for work, probably in as a garretminer, writing Great Words and hating them. The idea of Great Writers having friendsquarryman, shepherd or even a familypack-horse driver, is a bizarre one. Partly this is but because most Great Writers were incredibly weird people. But there's another issue at play. We're simply not used he wanted to imagining them in context, just one small part of a large for pleasure and busy worldadventure. Our notion of biography is an incredibly fragmented one: despite the fact that one of the best indications of someone's character is how they interact His rapturous encounters with other human beingstheir natural beauty, we expect biographers to essentially confine themselves to the person and their its literary outputconsequences, changed our view of the world''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951867</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances A GerardGraff_Find|title=Anna Amalia, Grand Duchess: Patron of Goethe and SchillerFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=Anna Amalia When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of Brunswickhandwritten notes from his journal, a Duchess he didn't take much notice of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach in the eighteenth century, is scarcely little more than a footnote in European royal history these daysit. Nevertheless it was mainly through her patronage that At the court of Weimar became one age of 24, Graff didn't realise the most artistically renowned gravity of the time, a reputation it never lost throughout the increasingly militaristic times that Germany went through from the age of Bismarck and beyondpages he was holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781550166</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adrian Fort1789016304|title=NancyWar and Love: The Story A family's testament of Lady Astoranguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Nancy, Lady AstorMelanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the first woman to take her seat as an elected Member of Parliament at Westminsterwar years, is one of those characters about whom it is surely impossible for anyone but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to write happen in a dull biographycountry with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. A determined character Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who inspired admirationthought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, respect and exasperation that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in equal measure from most if not all who had dealings with herthe way that it did, she is well served by this latest in but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a long line vast scale but made up of titles devoted to hertens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409016X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julia Jones1786893452|title=Fifty Years In The Fiction Factory: The Working Life Of Herbert AllinghamUngrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Herbert Allingham was one of Here in the most prolific authors of his timeWest, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. Between 1886 and his death in 1936 he was a busy writer But all of melodramatic serial those stories in are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the mass-market halfpenny papers which flourished at investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to the turn of world and the centurysituations that refugees find themselves in. Yet nothing he wrote was ever published It's rare that we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in book form with his name to itthis intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the magazine proprietors made fortunes while their authors were the unsung heroes middle of the tradea revolution in Iran, fleeing to America as a ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1899262075</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Doggett0857058320|title=The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970s|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 Lord Of All 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>}} {{newreviewDead|author=Victoria Glendinning|title=Raffles And the Golden OpportunityJavier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Although Raffles has gone down in history as ''Lord Of All the founder 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 Dead'' is a lowly clerkship with journey to uncover the East india Company, then as large author's lost ancestor's life and ungainly as many a governmentdeath. When he went abroad on behalf of Cercas is searching for the Company he quickly learned meaning behind his great uncle's death in the merits of doing something and asking permission afterwardsSpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, not least because of is the figure who looms large over the time taken to contact London and then receive a replybook. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Even if all went well Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this could take dictator. The question at the best part centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a year - by which time hero whilst having fought for the original question could well be academicwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686032</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher Simon Sykes1788037812|title=HockneyThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Biography, Volume 1Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 19371891-19751908|author=Brian Anderson
|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 one of Originally passed in 1885, the few people who genuinely needs no introductionlaw 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. He's been in Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the public eye since his birth nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the interest is certain to increase rather than diminish as time goes byheterosexual Havelock Ellis. On Exploring the other hand he ''is'' only thirty. Is there really going to be enough to warrant a book margins of society and will it be anything more than an attempt to cash in studying homosexuality was common on his marriage the European Continent, but barely talked about in 2011 and the current interest in all things royal engendered by UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? You can see that I was something scientific understanding of a reluctant reader - my sympathies are republican rather than royalist homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and in addition Penny Junor is known equality, leading to be a supporter the milestone legalisation of Prince Charles same-sex relationships in what can be described as the War of the Waleses1967. Was this ''really'' going to be a book which I would enjoy?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444720392</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley HarrisonBuckland_Zoo|title=Sylvia PankhurstThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: The Rebellious SuffragetteFrank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=To some extent, the history of the suffragettes was also the history of As a conservationist in Victorian England before the Pankhurst family. Sylvia, born in 1882term existed, Frank Buckland was the second daughter of Dr Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst, and one of three sisters. The family had always been heavily politicised, Richard being very much a founder member man ahead of the Fabian Society alongside George Bernard Shaw and H.Ghis time. WellsSurgeon, and the children had quite an austere upbringing. When their father’s health took a sudden turn for the worse in 1898naturalist, Emmeline and eldest daughter Christabel were abroad on business veterinarian and Sylvia was left in charge of her younger siblings as well as having to nurse eccentric sums himup perfectly, taking the full force of the shock when he died in her arms. With his passing the family were left strangely detached from each other. His widow became heavily involved in public work and political agitation, an increasingly remote mother from the young children who needed herany biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780950187</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tracy BormanWilliams_Captain|title=Matilda: Wife Captain Ronald Campbell of the ConquerorBombala Station, first Queen of EnglandCambalong: His Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Writing In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the biography 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of any woman who lived as long ago as the eleventh century, even someone as illustrious as troops and convicts on board a Queenship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, is a pretty thankless taskAustralia: his wife and young son accompanied him. There will always be huge gaps in the knowledge available. For example we do not know when Matilda He was born, and likewise we do not have destined to live a precise date for her marriagelong life, although we do know when she died. No lifelike images dying suddenly at the age of her are known34 at Bangalore, though evidence suggests that she was quite short of statureleaving his widow to raise their two young sons. In Edwards' death left his widow in a male-dominated society, there are approximate records of when her sons were borndifficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but not her daughters. Even more confusingly perhaps, many of she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the stories passed down to us throughout history are quite probably falseland. It is hardly surprising that this appears to be the first full-length life of her yet to appear in EnglishTwo years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549131</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreview|author=Michael Rosen|title=Fantastic Mr Dahl|rating=5|genre=Children's Non-Fiction|summary=Reading this book is rather like curling up in a deep, squishy armchair with a cup of cocoa and some squashed-fly biscuits while a favourite uncle chats to you about books. He tells you interesting things about Roald Dahl's life, and then he discusses how those events may have affected his writing, secure in the knowledge that you already know and love the stories. Just as important, he pauses in his chat from time to time to ask your opinion — and it's clear he's really interested in your answer. Do you prefer the original version of ''James and the Giant Peach'', 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?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141322136</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Leo McKinstryPeacock_mountain|title=Jack Hobbs: England's Greatest Cricketer|rating=5|genre=Sport|summary=Back in the early 1920s, there were only three Test cricket playing nations; England, Australia and South Africa. In the summer of 2012, both nations have been on tour; Australia recently beaten comprehensively at one day cricket and South Africa about to start a test series to determine the best Test nation in the world. Given that history is repeating itself, it seems appropriate that a new biography of Jack HobbsInto The Mountain, England's greatest run scorer and a man who repeatedly blunted the bowling attacks A Life of both nations, should become available now.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224083309</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewNan Shepherd|author=Robert K Massie|title=Catherine the Great: Portrait of a WomanCharlotte Peacock
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Already known for major biographies of Nicholas Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and Alexandraso many books… I can understand the approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and of Peter we sell the Greatmyriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while, like most other people I have my favourite genres, and favoured authors, Massie has now written an equally full and absorbing life of while, like most other people I read the late eighteenthreviews and follow up on what appeals, I also have a third-century reigning Empressstring to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0679456724</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|author=Tim Ewart|title=The Treasures of Queen Elizabeth|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=Tim Ewart is Royal Correspondent for ITV News, which must be one of the perfect starting points for writing a biography of the Queen as she celebrates her diamond jubilee. She's only the second British monarch Move on to achieve this landmark - the other being Queen Victoria. After sixty years on the throne - and eighty six in public life - there's not much which isn't known about the Queen [[Newest Business 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 a freshness for many readers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780970064</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]

Navigation menu