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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1788360702|title=Charles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the 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 reputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, logical reasoning to his ambitions.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1739805100|title=CherLoving the Enemy: Strong EnoughBuilding bridges in a time of war|author=Josiah HowardAndrew March

|summary=Having looked at ''Loving the title and sub-title, Enemy'' tells the latter being no more than the two-word title quite extraordinary story of one of her latter-day hitsauthor Andrew March's grandparents, I assumed this was going who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to be a fairly comprehensive biography Dresden to teach in the early days of the American singerNazi regime in the 1930s. The sub-titleFred, ''Strong Enough''a sensitive and thoughtful man, taken from one had some vague ideas of her latter-day hit singles, reveals nothing. Not until I had almost finished it, a little puzzled at it not being quite what I had expected, did I finally look "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the blurb on the back – at which point all became cleartime. This was not the full story of a showbiz career which has Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted close on half for a century, but for the most part an extraordinarily detailed account of her 1975 TV variety showlifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654842</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Empress Dowager CixiWill Brooker|authortitle=Jung ChangThe Truth About Lisa Jewell

|summary=It’s easy to see why Jung Chang selected Cixi as Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the focal point for her study of China’s tumultuous modern historymost successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Cixi is a truly fascinating woman Now meet Will Brooker, one of few human beings whose existence can be honestly said to the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have shaped read. This book starts with the course two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of history. Cixi’s biography is not only her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a fascinating read due get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to her own political machinationsattend), but also because pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the immense transformations rabbit-hole that occurred in China during her lifetimeis Jewell's diverse output. Jung Chang offers a detailed exploration of the period from Cixi’s entrance to court in 1852 Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her death through a year in 1908the published author's life, during which time working to make a success of the ancient dynastic customs of China gave way to latest title, and struggling with the advent of next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the industrial ageresult.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087436</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Martha Leigh|title=BertieInvisible Ink: A Life of Edward VII|author=Jane RidleyFamily Memoir|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Several of the main facts Martha Leigh begins her book talking about King Edward VII (1841-1910) are reasonably well-knowna childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Considered oversexed by Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his parents, Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, typewriter as he was blamed by edits the former for breaking complete correspondence of the latterphilosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's heart and causing his early death with the news that he (Edward) had enjoyed himself with a lady of the nightwork. He was notoriously unfaithful to his charming but prematurely deaf and lame wife Alexandra, hated reading books and learning but became Her mother is a first-class unofficial ambassador to courts and countries abroad, and despite low expectations of others and poor health he made an excellent King concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the last nine years practicalities of his life. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575442</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony SummersPolly Barton|title=Not In Your Lifetime: The Assassination of JFKFifty Sounds

|genre=True CrimePolitics and Society|summary=Originally published as Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''The Kennedy ConspiracyWhy Japan?'', Anthony Summers Japan has massively revised been on my radar for a while and if the textworld hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, updated it with but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the latest evidence and itquestion ''s been republished as why Japan?''Not She explains her feelings in Your Lifetime: The Assassination respect of JFK'' which refers to the statement made by Chief Justice Earl Warren who was asked if question in the truth about what happened would come out. He said that it wouldfirst essay, but added which is on the rider that sound ''it might not be in your lifetimegiro' ''. Fifty years on most of the people directly involved are now dead– which she describes as being, but the truth has not officially emerged. In factamong other things, it's difficult to avoid the thought that the US government would prefer that it did not see the light sound of day. Further documents are due ''every party where you have to be released in 2017, but, in the meantime Anthony Summer has examined what is available, investigated on his own behalf and given us this comprehensive bookintroduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755365429</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder That Changed the WorldFrederic Gros|authortitle=Greg King and Sue WoolmansA Philosophy of Walking

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Possibly no assassination I confess I picked this one up from the library in history 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 pages I have had such momentous consequences for the history of the world as that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria marked and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, return to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you in June 1914slowly. It was their killing which led directly to the outbreak of This one had me in the First World Warfirst two pages, just six weeks laterwherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0230759572</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Red Love: The Story of an East German FamilySharon Blackie|authortitle=Maxim LeoIf Women Rose Rooted

|genre=Biography|summary=Chances are there I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have been major disagreements and splits in your familycorners turned down. One black sheep might have supported Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the wrong football teamone I've borrowed. Some of you will be strictly I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful'Strictly'inspiring', the rest ''X Factor''. But probably nothing compares to what went on in the Leo household over decades in Eastern Berlin. One of our author's grandfathers, Gerhard, was too Jewish and bourgeois to survive life in Germany, fled to France, and came back a Communist having fought against Nazism. His counterpart Werner ended the war with some semblance of PTSD, and more or less landed in Communist Berlin due to facts of administration, yet became a fully-fledged Party activist. Authorchanging's mother Anne worked as a journalist on – although it is definitely the Communist mouthpiece newspaper, even if she managed to doubt things she was forced to write during first two and only time will tell about the Prague Spring and more. Her husband Wolf third – Werner's son – in but clichés exist for a similar industry was involved in sort-of Photoshopping for propaganda, reason and often sabotaged his own output. He was violent, awkward, but very anti-establishment. And if you I'm not sure I can't see how having a non-Communist in such a family in the heightened times of Cold War Berlin would be, you certainly will after reading this gripping collective biographysuccinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908968516</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara A Perry0241446732|title=Rose KennedyOur House is on Fire: The Life Scenes of a Family and Times of a Political MatriarchPlanet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=It's about fifty years since the assassination of President John F Kennedy and it The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was he (an opera singer and particularly his death) who brought Svante Thunberg took on most of the Kennedy family to the attention parenting of a new generationtheir two daughters. An earlier generation had been split about the virtues (or otherwise) of his fatherThen eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, Joe Kennedythen nine years old, multi millionaire and United States Ambassador to Great Britainstruggled with what was happening. But behind both of these men was mother and wifeIn such circumstances, Rose Kennedy and Barbara A Perry has produced it's natural to seek a superb biography using letterssolution close to home, diaries and other archived material recently made availablebut eventually, it became clear to the family that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393068951</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0648684806|title=Eminent ElizabethansClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=Piers BrendonJohn Holliday

|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick''Eminent Elizabethans'' is in effect a descendant of s life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the author’s ''Eminent Edwardians''USA. The latter, a volume At the time she was just three-years-old but because of short biographies of four British iconic figures of the early twentieth centurysome childhood ailment, was in turn inspired by Lytton Strachey’s barbed she wasn'Eminent Victorians', published in 1918, a debunking of four Victorian heroes whom the iconoclast Strachey wished t allowed to demonstrate had feet of clay.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532638</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Sisters of the East End|author=Helen Batten|rating=3.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Katie Crisp had never intended to become a nun. Raised by non-religious sail with her parents, her family frowned upon organised religion and when Katie started secretly going to church, they strongly disapprovedthree brothers. When Katie ran to the aid of a stroke victim Instead, she had a vision that changed remained with her grandparents, who doted on her life. She and saw herself dressed as that she received a nun with a large silver cross hanging from her neckgood education, both in and out of school. She decided to follow her calling and join was the community of St John only child in the Divine, a group of Anglican nuns dedicated to nursing household and midwifery. She thus shed her old identity and became known as Sister Catherine Marychildhood was glorious.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091951771</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jerry Oppenheimer|title=Crazy Rich: Power By contrast, Scandal and Tragedy Inside the Johnson & Johnson Dynasty|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=Back her family had become pioneer farmers in 1885 three brothers were inspired by a speech by Joseph Lister, the pioneer of antiseptic surgery, to create a range of surgical dressings mid- such things were previously unheard west of - the United States and this life was the beginning of Johnson & Johnsonhard, providers of Band-Aids as Clara was to find out when she and baby powder. It also brought phenomenal wealth her grandparents eventually went to join the founders and a variety of trusts continued this down the yearsfamily. The first president of the company Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was Robert Wood Johnson. NFL fans will be aware of his great grandsonmarried for fifteen years, Robert Wood Johnson IV (known as 'Woody')had ten pregnancies, owner of the New York Jetsseven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. In between As the two - eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and afterwards - there are Wisconsin was a string of tragedies and scandals which put you in mind of the Kennedy dynastyrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0312662114</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1789017977|title=AmericaRonnie and Hilda's MistressRomance: The Towards a New Life and Times of Eartha Kittafter World War II|author=John L Wendy Williams

|genre=EntertainmentHistory|summary=Two quotes on Ronnie Williams was the back son of the dust jacket testify to the power Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and public perception of Eartha Kitt during her lifetimeEthel Wall. Orson Welles once called her ‘the most exciting woman 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 the world’1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while , the family was quite well-to -do but disaster struck in the CIA she 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was ‘a sadistic nymphomaniac’his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857385755</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Inferno Decoded: The essential companion to the myths, mysteries and locations of Dan Brown's InfernoPatti Smith|authortitle=Michael HaagYear of the Monkey

|summary=Biographies old and new On the coast of Queen VictoriaSanta Cruz, her husband and her children are plentiful enough. The vast majority Patti Smith enters the lunar year of them are based to some extent on the diariesmonkey - one packed with mischief, memoirs and biographies of some of the most important figures who served hersorrow, and Kate Hubbard has put these as well as supplementary archive papers to good use in presenting unexpected moments. In a thoroughly engrossing account stranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the royal household throughout monkey''. As Smith wanders the Queen’s lengthy reign. I might almost say ‘lively’coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, though she reflects on a year that could be an exaggeration. The court of Victoria may have been homely after a fashionbrings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, but for as it the most part it was hardly livelyshifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532239</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Sellers1912242052|title=What Fresh Lunacy is This?: The Authorised Biography of Oliver ReedO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=For rather more of his career than ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because hehad to for work, his family and closest friends might have likedas a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, the name Oliver Reed was a byword but because he wanted to for booze, brawls pleasure and all types of laddish behaviouradventure. As Sellers’ very full His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and remarkably objective biography revealsits literary consequences, it was a funny yet sad life all at once. For although he repeatedly played up to the image changed our view of the lovable rogue which he had created, underneath the bad boy of popular legend he was at heart a professional actor who could always deliver a first-rate performance on the film set when requiredworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147210112X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neal ThompsonGraff_Find|title=A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not' Ripley |rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Robert LeRoy Ripley was indeed a curious man. He throve 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 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 the most successful men of the age.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947204</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFind Another Place|author=Hermione Lee|title=Edith WhartonBen Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=A prolific author, Edith WhartonWhen Ben Graff's published output included over twenty novels, one grandfather Martin handed him a Pulitzer Prize winnerplastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, and 85 short stories, as well as poetry and books on interior design and travel. Born in the United States in 1862, she travelled extensively throughout Europe, and settled permanently in France where she died in 1937.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845952014</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sylvie Simmons|title=Ihe didn'm Your Man: The Life t take much notice of Leonard Cohen|rating=4it.5|genre=Biography|summary=If you or I wanted to write a story about an imaginary figure who began as a novelist and poet, then became acclaimed as a singer-songwriter in At the swinging sixties, made and lost a fortune, became a monk, and returned to a musical career at an age when most mortals are well into retirement, and found himself not only more popular than ever but also playing to the largest audiences in his entire life, it would be dismissed as total fantasy. Nobody could make it up – and nobody needs to, because in a nutshell that is the life (so far) of Leonard Cohen24, Graff didn't realise the subject of this biography and surely one gravity of the music business’s most unique figurespages he was holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549328</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=J C Kannemeyer1789016304|title=J.M. CoetzeeWar and Love: A life in writing|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee is described as probably the most celebrated and decorated writer throughout the English-speaking world. The author family's testament of sixteen published novels, he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Booker Prize twice. At the same time he has guarded his privacy jealouslyanguish, tending to decline interviews endurance and requests to discuss his work, and refusing to collect prestigious awards devotion in person. On one occasion he explained his absence by saying that he could not imagine '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 not utter a single word.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922070084</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewoccupied Amsterdam|author=Vladimir Alexandrov|title=The Black RussianMelanie Martin

|summary=Until I Melanie 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 war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this book I had could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never come across happen: even those who thought that the story of Frederick Bruce ThomasGermans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, 'that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the Black Russian'way that it did, beforebut initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It is 's an atrocity on a remarkable tale vast scale but made up of rags to riches, tragedy, success against the odds and subsequent failuretens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781855196</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Moore1786893452|title=NijinskyThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=The name Nijinsky is synonymous with dance from Here in the last days of imperial Russia. I must confess to knowing little West, we see news reports about him until I read thisimmigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, the first biography some scaremongering about them. But all of him for nearly forty yearsthose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and for me it was a surprise almost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to learn the world and the situations that his career was so tragically briefrefugees find themselves in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686180</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Diana Souhami|title=The Trials of Radclyffe Hall|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=It is a coincidence 's rare that we find out the year 1928 saw journeys from the first appearance of two English novels which were denounced refugees themselves – and initially suppressed on the grounds of obscenity and their potential this is a rare opportunity to corrupt innocent readers – D.H. Lawrence’s 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' and Radclyffe Hall's 'The Well of Loneliness'. Lawrence's many novelsdo that, stories and poems are widely read todayin this intelligent, but Hall powerful and her works are hardly remembered except moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the middle of a minority. Diana Souhami has done her a service revolution in this generous yet deeply probing life of Iran, fleeing to America as a literary trailblazerten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878788</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami0857058320|title=Greta Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and CecilAnne McLean (translator)

|summary=The story of ''Lord Of All the notoriously reclusive film star from Sweden and the noted British photographer Dead'' is a curious one. Neither ever married, both were androgynous journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and bisexual, plucked their eyebrows, and had numerous short-term relationshipsdeath. 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 Cercas is searching for others the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the lens (he couldn’t look more feminine in two pictures of him in frocks by Dorothy Wilding from 1925 if he tried)Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, while she was very much an early bed at night personCercas' great uncle, preferred to wear unfussy men’s clothes, and was reluctant to be photographed is the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at all if she could help it. It is significant that the one picture centre of them together in the this book, taken in London in 1951, shows her deliberately hiding her face behind what looks like is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a handbaghero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878869</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami1788037812|title=Natalie and Romaine|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=The main focus Fraternity of the book is the relationship between Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks, two very well-off American lesbians who first met Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights 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 insistenceEngland, it is less a double biography than a survey of the Sapphic society life which centred on Paris for much of this period. Barney, a poet, was a flamboyant character who used to say that 'living was the first of all the arts' and often vowed to make 'my life itself into a poem'. Brooks, a painter whose self1891-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>}} {{newreview1908|author=Thomas Wright|title=Circulation: William Harvey's Revolutionary IdeaBrian Anderson

|summary='Circulation' by Thomas Wright is a biography of English physician William Harvey’s lifeOriginally passed in 1885, and the story of the 'birth of law that had made homosexual relations a theory'crime remained in place for 82 years. It takes the reader through But during this time before, during and after the creation restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and completion of ''De Motu Cordis''1908, in which Harvey famously outlines the most comprehensive antecedent of three books on the mechanism nature of blood circulation as we know it todayhomosexuality appeared. The combination of the writer's aptitude for storytelling and the intriguing life of the individual about whom he writes makes for a fascinating read, allowing one to course through chronologically arranged chapters on Harvey’s life They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and worksJohn Addington Symonds, mixed with briefer essays on subject matters ranging from as well as the history of vivisection to heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the philosophical underpinnings of Harvey’s work.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552698</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Morrison|title=The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=This book is a biography margins of society and based largely studying homosexuality was common on the letters of Lina Prokofiev. Born Carlina Codina European Continent, but barely talked about in Madrid in 1897the UK, she spent most so the publications of her childhood in New York. After making her stage debut as a soprano in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’ under these men were hugely significant – contributing to the name scientific understanding of Lina Llubera, she met the Soviet composer and pianist Serge Prokofievhomosexuality, best remembered for the children’s musical fable ‘Peter and beginning the Wolf’. They married in 1924 and struggle for the first thirteen years of their marriage they lived in Paris, where two sons, Oleg recognition and Svyatoslavequality, were born leading to them. Soon after moving to Moscow the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships 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 later1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557313</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yehuda Koren and Eilat NegevBuckland_Zoo|title=Giants: The Dwarfs of AuschwitzMan Who Ate the Zoo: The Extraordinary Story Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of the Lilliput Troupenatural history|author=Richard Girling

|summary=The title of this book does of course carry As a sense of ironyconservationist in Victorian England before the term existed, although we never quite know exactly how Frank Buckland was very much. When a man ahead 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 dwarfismtime. But history has pieced together all that followedSurgeon, including the careers those children had as a performance troupe, belting out showtunes to their own accompanimentnaturalist, veterinarian and acting in their own tragi-comic skits. And then having the limelight stolen from them by the Naziseccentric sums him up perfectly, and any biographer is immediately presented with a transportation colourful tale 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'tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849544646</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter AckroydWilliams_Captain|title=Wilkie CollinsCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: His Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams

|summary=While Peter Ackroyd has published some extremely long books over In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the last few yearstroops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, he has also been responsible for some commendably concise volumes as wellAustralia: his wife and young son accompanied him. This He was not destined to live a long life of , dying suddenly at the Victorian novelist is one age of the latter34 at Bangalore, the latest in leaving his series of 'Brief Liveswidow to raise their two young sons. Edwards'death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, which have but she was also included Chaucer, responsible for the convicts who worked the painter Turner and [[Poe by Peter Ackroyd|Edgar Allan Poe]]land. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287471</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gary RaymondPeacock_mountain|title=3-Minute JRR Tolkien: Into The Mountain, A Visual Biography Life of The World's Most Revered Fantasy WriterNan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock|rating=4.5

|summary=When something with such a built-in cult base as Tolkien Mostly we choose what 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, read because there is so little time and then to try and buy everything worthwhile with even a tenuous link to so many books… I can understand the object of their affectionsapproach, while avoiding the mountain of crud that could deluge the unwary. Such but I also think we sell ourselves short by it will be until the third movie part of ''The Hobbit'' is safely behind us, and we sell the sixmyriad lesser-filmknown authors short as well. So while, three-month long Blu-Ray box set is on the shelves. Tolkien enthusiasts of course like most other people I have a precarious situation – so great do they rightly hold the originalsmy favourite genres, and favoured authors, and so low can the quality of the spin-offs bewhile, there are some who will never be satisfied. But there remains like most other people I read the newcomerreviews and follow up on what appeals, freshly inspired I also have a third-string to find out more, and those at least will certainly be able to enjoy this beginner's guide to [[:Categorymy reading bow:J R R Tolkien|J R R Tolkien]]randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908005831</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=John Fisher|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!': A Life in Jokes and Pictures|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=I grew up watching Tommy Cooper, and watching my dad do impressions of Tommy Cooper. I thought he was hilarious (the real Tommy!) and loved his expressions as he repeatedly tried and failed Move on to do magic tricks! This book is rather unusual as although it is a biography of sorts, giving information about Tommy's life and his history in the world of entertainment, it isn't text heavy, and so mostly Tommy's story is told through photographs [[Newest Business and pictures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]