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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami1788360702|title=Greta and CecilCharles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst

|summary=The story For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of the notoriously reclusive film star from Sweden alternative medicine and the noted British photographer is a curious onecomplementary therapies. Neither ever married''Charles, both were androgynous and bisexual, plucked their eyebrowsThe Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Prince's opinions, beliefs and had numerous short-term relationshipsaims against the background of the scientific evidence. They were like chalk There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and cheese; Beaton was a compulsive writer and diarist, while Garbo was reluctant his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to pick up the reputation of a pen even to sign her own name. He adored parties, publicity, dressing up in frocks and photographing himself or posing for others behind the lens (he couldn’t look more feminine in two pictures man who is proud of him in frocks by Dorothy Wilding from 1925 if he tried), while she was very much an early bed at night person, preferred his refusal to wear unfussy men’s clothesapply evidence-based, and was reluctant logical reasoning to be photographed at all if she could help it. It is significant that the one picture of them together in the book, taken in London in 1951, shows her deliberately hiding her face behind what looks like a handbaghis ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878869</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami1739805100|title=Natalie and RomaineLoving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of war|author=Andrew March|rating=34.5

|summary=The main focus of ''Loving the book is Enemy'' tells the relationship between Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooksquite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparents, two very well-off American lesbians who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in Paris when the former was 39 and early days of the latter 41. It was Nazi regime in the beginning of an often mercurial partnership which lasted for fifty years1930s. HoweverFred, despite the author’s insistencea sensitive and thoughtful man, it is less a double biography than a survey had some vague ideas of the Sapphic society life "building bridges" which centred on Paris for much of this period. Barney, a poet, was a flamboyant character who used to say that 'living was may guard against the first of all growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the artstime. Fred' and often vowed s attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make 'my life itself into a poem'. Brooks, a painter whose self-portrait adorns the front cover, was the product of a difficult childhood, abused by her mother who far preferred her mentally unbalanced brother, often proclaimed sadly friendships and connections that 'my dead mother stands between me and life'. An aloof soul, she made a brief marriage with the homosexual John Ellingham Brooks but left him within lasted for a yearlifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878826</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas WrightWill Brooker|title=Circulation: William Harvey's Revolutionary IdeaThe Truth About Lisa Jewell

|summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I'Circulation' by Thomas Wright is a biography of English physician William Harvey’s lifeve never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, and the story one of the 'birth thousands of a theory'less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. It takes This book starts with the reader through time beforetwo meeting each other, as well, during and after shows how 2021 drew the creation two closer and completion closer together. The meeting was 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 ''De Motu Cordisblack lace mini-dress with gold brocade''(certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, in which Harvey famously outlines the most comprehensive antecedent a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the mechanism of blood circulation as we know it todayrabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. The combination of Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the writerpublished author's aptitude for storytelling life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with the intriguing life of next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the individual result.|isbn=1529136024}}{{Frontpage|author= Martha Leigh|title= Invisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating= 5|genre= Biography|summary= Martha Leigh begins her book talking about whom he writes makes for a fascinating readchildhood spent in a slightly eccentric, allowing one to course through chronologically arranged chapters on Harvey’s life and worksimmediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, mixed with briefer essays forever clacking away on subject matters ranging from his typewriter as he edits the history complete correspondence of vivisection to the philosophical underpinnings philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of Harvey’s worklife. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099552698</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon MorrisonPolly Barton|title=The Love and Wars of Lina ProkofievFifty Sounds

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=This book is Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a biography of while and based largely on if the letters of Lina Prokofievworld hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. Born Carlina Codina in Madrid in 1897And like Barton, she spent most of I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her childhood feelings in New York. After making her stage debut as a soprano respect of the question in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’ under the name of Lina Lluberafirst essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she met describes as being, among other things, the Soviet composer 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 pianist Serge Prokofiev, best remembered for 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 children’s musical fable ‘Peter pages I have marked and the Wolf’return to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you in slowly. They married This one had me in 1924 and for the first thirteen years of their marriage they lived in Paris, where two sonspages, Oleg and Svyatoslav, were born wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.|isbn=1781688370}}{{Frontpage|author=Sharon Blackie|title=If Women Rose Rooted|rating=5|genre= Biography|summary= I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to themme by how many pages have corners turned down. Soon after moving Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to Moscow in 1936 their marriage fell apartbuy my own copy before I've finished reading the one I've borrowed. In 1941 he left her 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 clichés exist for a writer, Mira Mendelson, 24 years his junior, whom he married six years laterreason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846557313</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev0241446732|title=GiantsOur House is on Fire: The Dwarfs Scenes of Auschwitz: The Extraordinary Story of the Lilliput Troupea Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=The title of this book does of course carry a sense of irony, although we never quite know exactly how muchErnman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. When a man of diminutive stature was born in rural Romania in the 1860s nobody Malena Ernman was to know what would happen to his lineage – there was no clue then that he would father ten children, an opera singer and seven Svante Thunberg took on most 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 parenting of their own accompaniment, and acting in their own tragitwo daughters. Then eleven-year-comic skits. And then having the limelight stolen from them by the Nazis, old Greta stopped eating and a transportation to Auschwitz. And then being surprisingly saved, talking and given what passed as a cushty lifeher sister, fed and togetherBeata, but tortured at the hands of the camp doctorthen nine years old, avidly researching anything he thought might shed clues on struggled with what singled out his Aryan racewas happening. In such circumstances, it's genetic destiny. I say the amount of irony is unknown because we are not told exactly how short these little characters are – natural to seek a solution close to home, but heeventually, it became clear to the doctor, would have known. As one of the more ominous sentences youfamily that they were ''ll read all year has it – burned-out people on a burned-out planet'Mengele had plans for them'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849544646</amazonuk> If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd0648684806|title=Wilkie CollinsClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=While Peter Ackroyd has published some extremely long books over The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the last few time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, he has also been responsible for some commendably concise volumes as wellshe wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. This life Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the Victorian novelist is one only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the latterUnited States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the latest in his series of 'Brief Lives'family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, which have also included Chaucerhad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the painter Turner eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and [[Poe by Peter Ackroyd|Edgar Allan Poe]]Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287471</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gary Raymond1789017977|title=3-Minute JRR TolkienRonnie and Hilda's Romance: A Visual Biography of The Towards a New Life after World's Most Revered Fantasy WriterWar II|author=Wendy Williams

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=When something with such a built-in cult base Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Tolkien books have gets transported into another medium, the manically interested fans have two reactions – to initially scoff at how nothing could compare with the original, Harry) and then Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to try and buy everything worthwhile with whether or not they were ever married or even a tenuous link Harry's birthdate: he claimed to the object of their affectionshave been born in 1863, while avoiding the mountain of crud that could deluge the unwarybut he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. Such it will be until the third movie part of ''The Hobbit'' is safely behind usFor a while, and the sixfamily was quite well-film, three-month long Bluto-Ray box set is on the shelves. Tolkien enthusiasts of course have a precarious situation – so great do they rightly hold but disaster struck in the originals, 1929 Depression and so low can the quality of the spinfive-year-offs be, there are some who will never be satisfiedold Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. But there remains the newcomer, freshly inspired One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to find be well-turned-out more, and those this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at least will certainly be able to enjoy this beginner's guide to [[:Category:J R R Tolkien|J R R Tolkien]]eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908005831</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John FisherPatti Smith|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!': A Life in Jokes and PicturesYear of the Monkey

|summary=I grew up watching Tommy CooperOn the coast of Santa Cruz, and watching my dad do impressions Patti Smith enters the lunar year of Tommy Cooper. I thought he was hilarious (the real Tommy!) monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and loved his expressions as he repeatedly tried and failed to do magic tricks! This book unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, ''Anything is rather unusual as although possible: after all, it is a biography of sorts, giving information about Tommy's life and his history in the world year of entertainment, it isnthe monkey''t text heavy. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and so mostly Tommy's story is told through photographs and picturesageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Unwin (editor)1912242052|title=Newcomers' Lives: The Story of Immigrants as Told in Obituaries from The TimesO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=I think I was not ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the only first person who at first glance found to walk the title mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and sub-title slightly misleadingadventure. For me it conjured up visions of those who came across on the ‘Windrush’ in 1948 and the life they led on settling in Britain – His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, andits literary consequences, perhaps, the lives changed our view of the more famous (assuming there were some) in obituary formworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441159177</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Artemis CooperGraff_Find|title=Patrick Leigh Fermor: An AdventureFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=The sub-title When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of this biography is highly appropriatehandwritten notes from his journal, for he didn't take much notice of it. At the ninety-six years age of Patrick Leigh Fermor were packed with adventure. Born in 191524, Graff didn't realise the gravity of the pages he was something of a maverick at school, intellectually gifted but perpetually naughty, and his punishments for various refractions included suspensions and even expulsionsholding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719554497</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Selina Guinness1789016304|title=The Crocodile by the DoorWar and Love: The Story A family's testament of a Houseanguish, a Farm endurance and a Familydevotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary=Selina Guinness lived at Tibradden as a child Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and in 2002 was entranced by what she and her husband-to-bediscovered, Colin Graham, moved back to the house when particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her elderly uncle Charles became frailown family's stories were equally fascinating. The surname might lead you to suspect that there A hundred and seven thousand Jews were brewery millions in deported from the city during the background war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this wasn't the casecould be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. The couple Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were young academics and doing what needed to convinced that they would soon be done at Tibradden pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would need never allow what happened to be done escalate in addition to full-time jobsthe way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. The house was It's an atrocity on the outskirts a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of Dublin - 'derelict fields' if you were a property developer or the last defence against the encroaching city if you were notindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844881571</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harry Ricketts1786893452|title=Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great WarUngrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=The majority of recent books on Here in the War Poets tend to focus West, we see news reports about immigrants on their lives during and immediately after the conflict. This enterprising account, borrowing its name from the poem by Wilfred Owen, takes a different approach in spanning a full fifty years or more. It begins with the first meeting of Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke at one of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914. Marsh was a tireless supporter of modern painters and after that promising new writersregular basis – some media welcoming them, particularly poetssome scaremongering about them. The journey, or rather account But all of meetingsthose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, takes us to the western front and back to Englandalmost always, culminating in a reunion of two of no matter how deep the longest-lived, Sassoon and David Jones, in 1964.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Callow|title=Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Once a towering presence on stage and screeninvestigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to the star of fifty films and forty plays, Charles Laughton seems largely forgotten these days. As an actor of a younger generation world and keen admirer of his work, Callow is well placed to bring him back to the foresituations that refugees find themselves in. He notes in his preface It's rare that we find out the journeys from the man has increasingly slipped out of public consciousness, refugees themselves – and even within his own profession he this is virtually unknown a rare opportunity to anybody under the age of forty|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581957</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Sugden|title=Nelson: A Dream of Glory|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=I will admit do that I didn't know what I was letting myself , in for when I saw 'Nelson: A Dream of Glory' sitting on the Bookbag shelfthis intelligent, but I had just come back from Portsmouth powerful and a wander around on the Victory, so it moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was a bit hard to resist. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951913</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kate Chisholm|title=Wits and Wives: Dr Johnson born in the Company of Women|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=What's your mental image middle of a Great Writer? Most people would probably say the same thing: someone sitting revolution in splendid isolation, probably in a garret, writing Great Words and hating them. The idea of Great Writers having friendsIran, or even a family, is a bizarre one. Partly this is because most Great Writers were incredibly weird people. But there's another issue at play. We're simply not used fleeing to imagining them in context, just one small part of America as a large and busy world. 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 with other human beings, we expect biographers to essentially confine themselves to the person and their literary outputten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951867</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances A Gerard0857058320|title=Anna Amalia, Grand Duchess: Patron of Goethe Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and SchillerAnne McLean (translator)

|summary=Anna Amalia of Brunswick, ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a Duchess of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach 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 eighteenth centurySpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is scarcely little more than a footnote in European royal history these daysthe 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 this dictator. Nevertheless it was mainly through her patronage that The question at the court centre of Weimar became one of the most artistically renowned of the time, this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a reputation it never lost throughout the increasingly militaristic times that Germany went through from hero whilst having fought for the age of Bismarck and beyondwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781550166</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adrian Fort1788037812|title=NancyThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Story of Lady AstorFight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=Nancy, Lady AstorOriginally passed in 1885, the first woman to take her seat as an elected Member of Parliament at Westminster, is one of those characters about whom it is surely impossible law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for anyone to write a dull biography82 years. A determined character who inspired admirationBut during this time, respect restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and exasperation in equal measure from most if not all who had dealings with her1908, she is well served by this latest in a long line three books on the nature of titles devoted to herhomosexuality appeared.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409016X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Julia Jones|title=Fifty Years In The Fiction FactoryThey were written by two homosexual men: The Working Life Of Herbert Allingham|rating=4Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis.5|genre=Biography|summary=Herbert Allingham was one of Exploring the most prolific authors margins of his time. Between 1886 society and his death in 1936 he studying homosexuality was a busy writer of melodramatic serial stories common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the mass-market halfpenny papers which flourished at UK, so the turn publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the century. Yet nothing he wrote was ever published in book form with his name to itscientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the magazine proprietors made fortunes while their authors were struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the unsung heroes milestone legalisation of the tradesame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1899262075</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter DoggettBuckland_Zoo|title=The Man Who Sold The WorldAte the Zoo: David Bowie And The 1970sFrank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling

|summary=Although Raffles has gone down As a conservationist in history as Victorian England before 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 a lowly clerkship with the East india Companyterm existed, then as large and ungainly as many Frank Buckland was very much a government. When he went abroad on behalf man ahead of the Company he quickly learned the merits of doing something and asking permission afterwards, not least because of the time taken to contact London and then receive a reply. Even if all went well this could take the best part of a year - by which his time the original question could well be academic.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686032</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Christopher Simon Sykes|title=Hockney: The BiographySurgeon, Volume 1naturalist, 1937-1975|rating=5|genre=Art|summary=As one of the major names of British twentieth century artveterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, David Hockney has always been a larger than life figure. Published to coincide and any biographer is immediately presented with his 75th birthday, this is the first volume of a biography which tells his story up colourful tale to 1975tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846057086</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lois BannerWilliams_Captain|title=MarilynCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: The Passion His Military Life and the ParadoxTimes|author=Ivor George Williams

|summary=With In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the possible exception 17th Regiment of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe is probably the most written-about deceased woman Foot. He was in twentieth-century history. The thirty-six years command of her life the troops and the manner of her death will no doubt continue convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to provide an opportunity for as many writers as they have since her sudden passingSydney, Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. After He was not destined to live a decade of research Lois Bannerlong life, a Professor dying suddenly at the age of History and Gender Studies 34 at university in CaliforniaBangalore, has added another weighty tome leaving his widow to the relevant shelvesraise their two young sons. As Edwards' death left his widow in a self-styled pioneer of second-wave feminism and difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the new women’s history, land. Two years later she has some interesting insights to offer into her subject’s life as a gender role modelwould marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408814102</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Penny JunorPeacock_mountain|title=Prince William: Born to be King: An Intimate Portrait|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Prince William is one of the few people who genuinely needs no introduction. He's been in the public eye since his birth and the interest is certain to increase rather than diminish as time goes by. On the other hand he ''is'' only thirty. Is there really going to be enough to warrant a book and will it be anything more than an attempt to cash in on his marriage in 2011 and the current interest in all things royal engendered by the Queen'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 to be a supporter of Prince Charles in what can be described as the War of the Waleses. Was this ''really'' going to be a book which I would enjoy?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444720392</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Shirley Harrison|title=Sylvia Pankhurst: The Rebellious Suffragette|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=To some extent, the history of the suffragettes was also the history of the Pankhurst family. Sylvia, born in 1882, was the second daughter of Dr Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst, and one of three sisters. Into The family had always been heavily politicisedMountain, Richard being a founder member A Life of the Fabian Society alongside George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, and the children had quite an austere upbringing. When their father’s health took a sudden turn for the worse in 1898, Emmeline and eldest daughter Christabel were abroad on business and Sylvia was left in charge of her younger siblings as well as having to nurse him, 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 her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780950187</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewNan Shepherd|author=Tracy Borman|title=Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror, first Queen of EnglandCharlotte Peacock

|summary=Writing the biography of any woman who lived as long ago as Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the eleventh centuryapproach, even someone as illustrious as a Queen, is a pretty thankless task. There will always be huge gaps in the knowledge available. For example but I also think we do not know when Matilda was bornsell ourselves short by it, and likewise we do not have a precise date for her marriage, although we do know when she died. No lifelike images of her are sell the myriad lesser-known, though evidence suggests that she was quite authors short of statureas well. In a male-dominated societySo while, like most other people I have my favourite genres, there are approximate records of when her sons were bornand favoured authors, but not her daughters. Even more confusingly perhapsand while, many of like most other people I read the stories passed down to us throughout history are quite probably false. It is hardly surprising that this appears to be the first fullreviews and follow up on what appeals, I also have a third-length life of her yet string to appear in Englishmy reading bow: randomness.|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>}} {{newreview|author=Leo McKinstry|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 Move 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 Hobbs, England's greatest run scorer and a man who repeatedly blunted the bowling attacks of both nations, should become available now.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224083309</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert K Massie|title=Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Already known for major biographies of Nicholas and Alexandra, and of Peter the Great, Massie has now written an equally full and absorbing life of the late eighteenth-century reigning Empress.|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 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]]