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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1788360702|title=Inferno DecodedCharles, The Alternative Prince: The essential companion to the myths, mysteries and locations of Dan Brown's InfernoAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Michael HaagEdzard Ernst

|genre=EntertainmentBiography|summary=Here be spoilersFor over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. Not so much in my review''Charles, but certainly in its subject, a very quickly produced companion guide to The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the latest [[:Category:Dan Brown|Dan Brown]] blockbuster. ItPrince's not so much a page-by-page guideopinions, but certainly serves as an educational beliefs and intelligent look at aims against the background of the scientific evidence. There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the biggestreputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-selling book of 2013based, logical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251800</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1739805100|title=Serving VictoriaLoving the Enemy: Life Building bridges in the Royal Householda time of war|author=Kate HubbardAndrew March

|summary=Biographies old and new ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of Queen Victoriaauthor Andrew March's grandparents, her husband and her children are plentiful enough. The vast majority who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the early days of them are based to some extent on the diariesNazi regime in the 1930s. Fred, memoirs a sensitive and biographies of thoughtful man, had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the most important figures who served her, and Kate Hubbard has put these as well as supplementary archive papers to good use growing hostilities between nations unfolding in presenting a thoroughly engrossing account of Europe at the royal household throughout the Queen’s lengthy reigntime. I might almost say ‘lively’, though Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that could be an exaggeration. The court of Victoria may have been homely after lasted for a fashion, but for the most part it was hardly livelylifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532239</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert SellersWill Brooker|title=What Fresh Lunacy is This?: The Authorised Biography of Oliver ReedTruth About Lisa Jewell

|summary=For rather more Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of his career than hethe most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, his family and closest friends might one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have likedread. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the name Oliver Reed was a byword for booze, brawls two closer and all types of laddish behaviourcloser together. As Sellers’ very full and remarkably objective biography revealsThe 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 ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a funny yet sad life all get-up never commonly worn at oncethe author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. For although Brooker decides he repeatedly played up 'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the image published author's life, working to make a success of the lovable rogue which he had createdlatest title, underneath and struggling with the bad boy of popular legend he was at heart a professional actor who could always deliver a first-rate performance on next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the film set when requiredresult.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>147210112X</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neal ThompsonMartha Leigh|title=Invisible Ink: A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not' Ripley Family Memoir|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=Robert LeRoy Ripley was indeed Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a curious manchildhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. He throve Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on curiosity, his own and that of everyone else. By exploiting and never underestimating the public demand for trivia, and by being in the right place at the right time just typewriter as the news and broadcasting media were beginning to develop in America into the unassailable forces they were by the end of the century, he became one of edits the most successful men complete correspondence of the age.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947204</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hermione Lee|title=Edith Wharton|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=A prolific authorphilosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edith Whartonhis life's published output included over twenty novels, one work. Her mother is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and 85 short stories, as well as poetry and books on interior design and travelconcert pianist who practises for hours every day. Born Neither parent is hugely interested in the United States practicalities of life. There is love in 1862, she travelled extensively throughout Europe, and settled permanently in France where she died in 1937the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845952014</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sylvie SimmonsPolly Barton|title=I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard CohenFifty Sounds

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=If you or Where do I start? I wanted to write a story about an imaginary figure who began as a novelist and poetcould start with where Barton herself starts, then became acclaimed as a singer-songwriter in with the swinging sixties, made and lost a fortune, became question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a monk, while and returned to a musical career at an age when most mortals are well if the world hadn't gone into retirementmelt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, and found himself but I am not only more popular than ever but also playing hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the largest audiences question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in his entire lifethe first essay, it would be dismissed which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as total fantasy. Nobody could make it up – and nobody needs tobeing, because in a nutshell that is the life (so far) of Leonard Cohenamong other things, the subject sound of this biography and surely one of the music business’s most unique figures''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099549328</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=J C KannemeyerFrederic Gros|title=J.M. Coetzee: A life in writingPhilosophy of Walking|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee is described as probably I confess I picked this one up from the most celebrated and decorated writer throughout the Englishlibrary in my pre-speaking world. The author lockdown forage of sixteen published novels, he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Booker Prize twicerandom stuff. At Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the same time he has guarded his privacy jealously, tending to decline interviews pages I have marked and requests return to discuss his work, and refusing its varying wisdom when I need to collect prestigious awards . Some books draw you in personslowly. On This one occasion he explained his absence by saying that he could not imagine had me in the first two pages, wherein Gros explains why 'anything better calculated to reduce me to misery'. One acquaintance claims to have attended several dinner parties at which the author was a fellow guest and did walking is not utter a single wordsport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1922070084</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Vladimir AlexandrovSharon Blackie|title=The Black RussianIf Women Rose Rooted

|genre=Biography|summary=Until I read this normally say that you can tell how much a book I had never come across the story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, 'the Black Russian', beforemeans to me by how many pages have corners turned down. It Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is a remarkable tale of rags setting out to riches, tragedy, success against buy my own copy before I've finished reading the odds and subsequent failure.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781855196</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lucy Moore|title=Nijinsky|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The name Nijinsky is synonymous with dance from the last days of imperial Russiaone I've borrowed. I must confess want to knowing little about him until I read this, the first biography of him for nearly forty years, and for me avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it was a surprise to learn that his career was so tragically brief.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686180</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Diana Souhami|title=The Trials of Radclyffe Hall|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=It is a coincidence that the year 1928 saw definitely the first appearance of two English novels which were denounced and initially suppressed on only time will tell about the grounds of obscenity and their potential to corrupt innocent readers third – D.H. Lawrence’s 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' and Radclyffe Hall's 'The Well of Loneliness'. Lawrence's many novels, stories and poems are widely read today, but Hall and her works are hardly remembered except by a minority. Diana Souhami has done her a service in this generous yet deeply probing life of clichés exist for a literary trailblazer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878788</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Diana Souhami|title=Greta reason and Cecil|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=The story of the notoriously reclusive film star from Sweden and the noted British photographer is a curious one. Neither ever married, both were androgynous and bisexual, plucked their eyebrows, and had numerous short-term relationships. They were like chalk and cheese; Beaton was a compulsive writer and diarist, while Garbo was reluctant to pick up 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 of him in frocks by Dorothy Wilding from 1925 if he tried), while she was very much an early bed at night person, preferred to wear unfussy men’s clothes, and was reluctant to be photographed at all if she could help I'm not sure I can succinctly put 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 handbagany better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780878869</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami0241446732|title=Natalie and Romaine|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=The main focus of the book Our House is the relationship between Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks, two very well-off American lesbians who first met in Paris when the former was 39 and the latter 41. It was the beginning of an often mercurial partnership which lasted for fifty years. However, despite the author’s insistence, it is less a double biography than a survey of the Sapphic society life which centred on Paris for much Fire: Scenes of this period. Barney, a poet, was a flamboyant character who used to say that 'living was the first of all the arts' Family and often vowed to 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 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 a year.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878826</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPlanet in Crisis|author=Thomas Wright|title=Circulation: William Harvey's Revolutionary IdeaMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary='Circulation' by Thomas Wright is a biography of English physician William Harvey’s life, The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and the story Svante Thunberg took on most of the 'birth parenting of a theory'their two daughters. It takes the reader through time before, during Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and after the creation talking and completion of ''De Motu Cordis''her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, in which Harvey famously outlines the most comprehensive antecedent of the mechanism of blood circulation as we know it today. The combination of the writer's aptitude for storytelling and the intriguing life of the individual about whom he writes makes for natural to seek a fascinating readsolution close to home, allowing one but eventually, it became clear to course through chronologically arranged chapters the family that they were ''burned-out people on Harvey’s life and works, mixed with briefer essays on subject matters ranging from the history of vivisection a burned-out planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to the philosophical underpinnings of Harvey’s workbe radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552698</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Morrison0648684806|title=The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=This book is a biography of and based largely on the letters of Lina Prokofiev. Born Carlina Codina in Madrid in 1897, she spent most of her childhood in New York. After making her stage debut as a soprano in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’ under the name of Lina Llubera, she met the Soviet composer and pianist Serge Prokofiev, best remembered for the children’s musical fable ‘Peter and the Wolf’. They married in 1924 and for the first thirteen years of their marriage they lived in Paris, where two sons, Oleg and Svyatoslav, were born 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 later.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557313</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev|title=Giants: The Dwarfs of AuschwitzClara Colby: The Extraordinary Story of the Lilliput Troupe|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The title of this book does of course carry a sense of irony, although we never quite know exactly how much. When a man of diminutive stature was born in rural Romania 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 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 in their own tragi-comic skits. And then having the limelight stolen from them by the Nazis, and a transportation to Auschwitz. And then being surprisingly saved, and given what passed as a cushty life, fed and together, but tortured at the hands of the camp doctor, avidly researching anything he thought might shed clues on what singled out his Aryan race's genetic destiny. I say the amount of irony is unknown because we are not told exactly how short these little characters are – but he, the doctor, would have known. As one of the more ominous sentences you'll read all year has it – 'Mengele had plans for them'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849544646</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewInternational Suffragist|author=Peter Ackroyd|title=Wilkie CollinsJohn 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 a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and immediately after almost always, no matter how deep the conflict. This enterprising accountinvestigative journalism they carry out, borrowing its name from outsiders to the world and the poem by Wilfred Owen, takes a different approach situations that refugees find themselves in spanning a full fifty years or more. It begins with 's rare that we find out the journeys from the first meeting of Siegfried Sassoon refugees themselves – and Rupert Brooke at one of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914. Marsh was this is a tireless supporter of modern painters and after rare opportunity to do that promising new writers, particularly poets. The journeyin this intelligent, or rather account powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the middle of meetingsa revolution in Iran, takes us fleeing to the western front and back to England, culminating in America as a reunion of two of the longestten-year-lived, Sassoon and David Jones, in 1964old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Callow0857058320|title=Charles Laughton: A Difficult ActorLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=Once ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a towering presence on stage and screen, journey to uncover the star of fifty films author's lost ancestor's life and forty plays, Charles Laughton seems largely forgotten these daysdeath. As an actor of a younger generation and keen admirer of Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his workgreat uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, Callow is well placed to bring him back to the forefigure who looms large over the book. He notes in died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his preface that uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the man has increasingly slipped out centre of public consciousness, and even within this book is whether it is possible for his own profession he is virtually unknown great uncle to anybody under be a hero whilst having fought for the age of forty|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581957</amazonuk>wrong side.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Sugden1788037812|title=NelsonThe Fraternity of the Estranged: A Dream of GloryThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=I will admit Originally passed in 1885, the law that I didn't know what I was letting myself had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for when I saw 'Nelson82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: A Dream Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of Glory' sitting society and studying homosexuality was common on the Bookbag shelfEuropean Continent, but I had just come back from Portsmouth barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and a wander around on beginning the Victorystruggle for recognition and equality, so it was a bit hard leading to resistthe milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951913</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate ChisholmBuckland_Zoo|title=Wits and WivesThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: Dr Johnson in the Company Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of Womennatural history|author=Richard Girling|rating=4.5

|summary=What's your mental image of As a Great Writer? Most people would probably say conservationist in Victorian England before the same thing: someone sitting in splendid isolationterm existed, probably in Frank Buckland was very much a garret, writing Great Words and hating themman ahead of his time. The idea of Great Writers having friendsSurgeon, or even a familynaturalist, 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 to imagining them in contextveterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, just one small part of 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 any biographer is how they interact immediately presented with other human beings, we expect biographers to essentially confine themselves a colourful tale to the person and their literary outputtell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951867</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances A GerardWilliams_Captain|title=Anna AmaliaCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Grand DuchessCambalong: Patron of Goethe His Military Life and SchillerTimes|author=Ivor George Williams

|summary=Anna Amalia In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of Brunswick, a Duchess the 17th Regiment of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach in the eighteenth century, is scarcely little more than a footnote in European royal history these daysFoot. Nevertheless it He was mainly through her patronage that the court of Weimar became one in command of the most artistically renowned of the time, troops and convicts on board a reputation it never lost throughout the increasingly militaristic times that Germany went through ship sailing from the age of Bismarck Plymouth to Sydney, Australia: his wife and beyondyoung son accompanied him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781550166</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Adrian Fort|title=Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Nancy, Lady AstorHe was not destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at the first woman to take her seat as an elected Member age of Parliament 34 at WestminsterBangalore, is one of those characters about whom it is surely impossible for anyone leaving his widow to write a dull biographyraise their two young sons. A determined character who inspired admiration, respect and exasperation Edwards' death left his widow in equal measure from most if a difficult position: not all only did she have their farm to manage, but she was also responsible for the convicts who had dealings with her, worked the land. Two years later she is well served by this latest in a long line of titles devoted to herwould marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409016X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julia JonesPeacock_mountain|title=Fifty Years In The Fiction Factory: Into The Working Mountain, A Life Of Herbert Allinghamof Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=Herbert Allingham was one of the most prolific authors of his Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time. Between 1886 and his death in 1936 he was a busy writer of melodramatic serial stories in so many books… I can understand the mass-market halfpenny papers which flourished at the turn of the century. Yet nothing he wrote was ever published in book form with his name to approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the magazine proprietors made fortunes myriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while their , like most other people I have my favourite genres, and favoured authors were , and while, like most other people I read the unsung heroes of the tradereviews and follow up on what appeals, I also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1899262075</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Peter Doggett|title=The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970s|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=With hindsight, it’s difficult Move on 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, [[Newest Business 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>}}Finance Reviews]]