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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marcel Ruijters and Laura Watkinson (translator)1788360702|title=HieronymusCharles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst

|genre=Graphic NovelsBiography|summary=This is a book for those who find it amusing that a biography of someone who For over forty years, Prince Charles has been dead 500 years is called an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'unauthorised'. This is a book where critically assesses the detail is in the devil – people pissing in the street; the locals baiting blind people armed with cudgels in a pit with a pigPrince's opinions, often failing to whack beliefs and aims against the beast and hitting their colleagues by mistake; farting demons visiting background of the sleeperscientific evidence. This is 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 book for those man who don't mind a spot is proud of ribaldryhis refusal to apply evidence-based, an affront to religious piety or suchlike in their graphic novels. Whether or not this is a book for those seeking a biography of Hieronymus Bosch remains logical reasoning to be seenhis ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861662466</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrea Wulf1739805100|title=The Invention of NatureLoving the Enemy: The Adventures Building bridges in a time of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Sciencewar|author=Andrew March

|summary=Alexander von Humboldt was born ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in Berlin the early days of the Nazi regime in 1769, the younger brother of Wilhelm von Humboldt who would become a Prussian minister but who is perhaps better remembered as a philosopher and linguist1930s. The family was well-to-do and both brothers benefitted from an excellent education, although they lacked affection from their emotionally-distant widowed motherFred, but it was a legacy from her which would fund Alexander's first explorations. His first travels would be in Europe where he met sensitive and was influenced by people such as Joseph Banksthoughtful man, President had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the Royal Society, who had travelled with Thomas Cook. But it was his travels growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Latin America which would lay Europe at the foundations for his lifetime. Fred's workattempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848548982</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephen ParkerWill Brooker|title= Bertolt Brecht - A Literary Life|rating= 3.5|genre= Biography|summary= Drawing on letters, diaries, and unpublished material, Stephen Parker offers a rich and detailed account of Brecht's life and work, and paints a new picture of one of the twentieth century's most controversial cultural icons – a man whose plays are performed more in Germany than Shakespeare's. Examining Brecht's beginnings in Bavaria, through the First World War and onto the beginnings of a career. Then, Brecht's journey through Weimar Germany where he became a political artist, struggling with the fascists who would eventually drive him to exile in Denmark, and onto life in the US – suspected of being a Soviet agent, before the eventual return to Germany, and a later life plagued with illness. This is a fascinating book about the man, his work, and the climates in which he wrote and influenced his work, as well as providing insights into the thought processes, health, and women who filled the world of Brecht.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1474240003</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Dominic Pearce|title= Henrietta Maria|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary=The phrase 'tragic Queen' is an often overused one, but the French princess who became the second Stuart Queen Consort of Britain surely has as strong a claim as any to the title. In British history she was unique in that she not only lived to see her husband defeated in civil war, but also sentenced to death and in effect judicially murdered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445645475</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Philip Weinstein|title=Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of RageTruth About Lisa Jewell|rating=3.5

|summary=''Jonathan FranzenMeet [[:Category: The Comedy Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of Ragethe most successful British authors I'' makes frequent mention ve never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of Franzen's attendance at Swathmore College in Pennsylvanialess successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, where he graduated in 1977 and where shows how 2021 drew the authortwo closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, Philip Weinstein wasit seems, until last year Professor of English. An earlier graduateher anecdote about cup cakes, the novelist James A. Michner left his entire estate words of some 10 million dollars to the college her latest book she was reciting, and the proceeds from his works, including the one on which her being in a ''South Pacificblack lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' was founded. It was (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at Swarthmore that Franzen met his wifethe author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, where she had been a gifted classmate. Weinstein, the author professor of cultural studies who teaches therehas swallowed Roland Barthes, has personally known Franzen for over two decades and down the latter has given him a personal interview and been otherwise in contact with him for some considerable timerabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. If this all seems just Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a little blurred year in its boundariesthe published author's life, not working to say incestuousmake a success of the latest title, then that might not matterand struggling with the next in line. However Jewell, Franzen's work closely concern itself with shamedue diligence appropriately done, guilt, incest, rage and humiliationagrees. And this is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1501307177</amazonuk>1529136024

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Adam SismanMartha Leigh|title= John le CarreInvisible Ink: The BiographyA Family Memoir

|summary=Some twenty years ago David Cornwell Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, better known immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as novelist John le Carré, told a couple he edits the complete correspondence of wouldthe philosopher Jean-be writers about him that he did not believe in Jacques Rousseau, his life'authorised' biographies or critiquess work. Adam Sisman, Her mother is a concert pianist who has since then been granted exclusive access to practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the man and his private archive, can therefore consider himself practicalities of life. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a lucky manchild does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408827921</amazonuk>1800460384

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Catherine HewittPolly Barton|title= The Mistress of ParisFifty Sounds|rating= 4.5|genre= BiographyPolitics and Society|summary= Born 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 while and if the world hadn't gone into poverty, nomelt-one could have guessed that the girl who would one day be known as Valtesse de la Bigne down I would have achieved greatnessvisited by now. This is the tale of her rise to wealth and power – starting in a dress shop as a thirteen I may get there later this year old, but fast becoming a courtesan who would be fought over by some of I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the greatest men of question ''why Japan?'' She explains her time. A woman who kept an air feelings in respect of mystery about many details of her lifethe question in the first essay, Catherine Hewitt nevertheless paints an incredible story around which is on the gapssound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, and this proves to be both a full and intriguing biographyamong other things, and a fascinating portrait the sound of the time period''every party where you have to introduce yourself''. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848319266</amazonuk>1913097501

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Despina StratigakosFrederic Gros|title=Hitler at HomeA Philosophy of Walking

|genre=HistoryPolitics and Society|summary=''Please do not make Hitler look good.'' Words to live by that I confess I picked this one up from the author library in my pre-lockdown forage of this volume received from her mother, a Kefalonian who knew Nazi abuse when she saw itrandom stuff. Rest assured Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the book does not do that, but it certainly provides a much fresher, more eloquent pages I have marked and interesting look at certain aspects of his life, and introduces us return to its varying wisdom when I need to someone else from the Nazi times – Gerdy Troost, who might as well be summarised as Hitler's interior designer. Some books draw you in slowly. In picking apart the entire life of Troost, the nature of her work and how the buildings and décor she surrounded Hitler in became a part of his propaganda, we get a refreshingly new yet authoritative book, that for those with an interest This one had me in this side of our recent history will easily be considered one of, if not thefirst two pages, best book of the year. The person who does come out with the laurels worn highest wherein Gros explains why ''walking is our authornot a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>030018381X</amazonuk>1781688370

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elizabeth NortonSharon Blackie|title= The Temptation Of Elizabeth TudorIf Women Rose Rooted|rating= 4.5

|summary= Life, or rather survival, in Tudor England was I normally say that you can tell how much a precarious businessbook means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Being close Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the crown was anything but a guarantee of safety, as the fate of two of King Henry VIIIone I's Queen's amply demonstratedve borrowed. His second daughter Elizabeth led a charmed I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life -changing' – although it is definitely the first two and went on to reign as Queen only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for over forty years, but she too had some narrow escapes when her liberty if a reason and I'm not her very existence was under threatsure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784081728</amazonuk>1912836017

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jeffrey James0241446732|title= Edward IVOur House is on Fire: Glorious Son Scenes of Yorka Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryPolitics and Society|summary= Medieval England's own game of thrones, The Wars of the Roses, was at the centre of a turbulent ageErnman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. In retrospect much of the history of medieval England, between the Norman conquest Malena Ernman was an opera singer and the advent Svante Thunberg took on most of the Tudors, seems to have been a chronicle parenting of instability often verging on and sometimes erupting into rebellion or civil wartheir two daughters. The fifteenthThen eleven-year-century conflicts between the houses of Lancaster old Greta stopped eating and talking and Yorkher sister, Beata, lasting intermittently for thirty then nine yearsold, were more protracted and even more brutal than the rest, struggled with several fierce battles and sudden changes of fortune for the two rival families, both descended from King Edward IIIwhat was happening. The riseIn such circumstances, fall and rise again of King Edward IV was it's natural to seek a constant theme of solution close to home, but eventually, it became clear to the warsfamily 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>1445646218</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Spencer Leigh0648684806|title= Frank SinatraClara Colby: An Extraordinary LifeThe International Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating= 4|genre= EntertainmentBiography|summary= Frank Sinatra The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was undoubtedly just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a legendgood education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. In a notoriously precarious professionBy contrast, he managed to stay at her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the topUnited States and life was hard, or very close as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to it, for a remarkably long timejoin the family. Despite Clara would only know her mother for a few half-hearted flirtations with other styles which may have strayed a little from his comfort zonemonths: she was married for fifteen years, he remained true to his musical stylehad ten pregnancies, won seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the respect of younger generationseldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and never really went out of fashionWisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857160869</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Neil Hegarty1789017977|title= FrostRonnie and Hilda's Romance: That Was The Towards a New Life That Was: The Authorised Biographyafter World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating= 54|genre= BiographyHistory|summary= Just a glance at this book is enough Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to make us realise, whether or not they were ever married or remind useven Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, that Sir David Frost but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a towering presence while, the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the world of television for around half 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a centuryvery different lifestyle. From the days when One thing he stormed the barricades of cosy light entertainment at the start of the swinging sixties, did inherit from his father was his need to his major political interviews be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his position as one of the founding fathers of TV-am, he was a cornerstone of the industrylife. Without him, He joined the history of broadcasting during that period would surely have been very differentarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753556707</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Van der KistePatti Smith|title=Jeff Lynne: The Electric Light Orchestra - Before and AfterYear of the Monkey|rating=4.5

|summary=Jeff Lynne grew up in a Birmingham suburb right at On the end coast of 1947: even as a child he was passionate about music and was a much respected guitarist as a teenager. He was a member of various semi-professional groups - critical acclaim came when he fronted Idle Race in Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the late sixties and popularity and a degree lunar year of commercial success arrived when he joined the popular group The Move. Whilst still playing monkey - one packed with that group he co-foundedmischief, sorrow, along with Roy Woodand unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, the groundbreaking Electric Light Orchestra''Anything is possible: after all, but it was with Wood's departure that Lynne turned what had been an occasionally uneasy fusion the year of the monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of classical and rock into Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a successful year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and popular actageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781554927</amazonuk>1526614758

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Findlay1912242052|title=Chasing Lost TimeO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary= A Catholic convert and ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a homosexualminer, a socialite party goer yet deeply lonelyquarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, a secretive spy but because he wanted to for pleasure and a public man of letters, Scott Moncrieff was an enigmaadventure. His translation of Proust’s ''A La Recherché du Temps Perdu'' was highly praisedrapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and Moncrieff was also celebrated as a decorated hero its literary consequences, changed our view of World War One. Here, his great-great niece Jean Findlay skilfully retells the life of an intriguing man – and one whom I was utterly charmed byworld''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507080</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Desmond SewardGraff_Find|title= Renishaw Hall: the story of the SitwellsFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating= 43.5|genre= BiographyAutobiography|summary= Renishaw HallWhen Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, Derbyshire, has been the home he didn't take much notice of the Sitwells since 1625it. Though At the history age of the house and its family go back to the early Stuart era, as Seward tells us in a few wonderfully concise chapters24, it is really with Graff didn't realise the appearance gravity of the eccentric Sir George Sitwell and his three famous children that the narrative comes into its ownpages he was holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178396183X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Finn and Petra Couvee1789016304|title=The Zhivago AffairWar and Love: The Kremlin, the CIAA family's testament of anguish, endurance and the Battle over a Forbidden Bookdevotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary=One of the many things Melanie Martin read about what happened to come out of this incredibly clear Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and readable book is that we Brits, for all our literary heritage, have got nothing like an equivalent to Boris Pasternak. He or was entranced by what she would have to sell like Rowlingdiscovered, regularly capture the enjoyment and spirit particularly in ''The Diary of the nation a la Danny BoyleAnn Frank'' but then realised that her own family's Olympics ceremonies, stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and at seven thousand Jews were deported from the same time have city during the cultural heft of Larkinwar years, Rushdie, Graham Greene but only five thousand survived and more combinedMartin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Someone connected with choosing recipients of Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the Nobel Prize declare him here to city were convinced that they would soon be the Soviet TS Eliotpushed back, but that's nothing like. So the reader probably has Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to stretch herself to see someone so well-respected and well-loved for his verseescalate in the way that it did, who spent twelve years and but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a huge, society-defining novel, only for the country to nix every plan to get it publishedvast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581345</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marlena de Blasi1786893452|title=The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary= Author Marlena de Blasi lives in the (as far as I can tell from having a quick google), beautiful small Italian city of Orvieto – deep in the beautiful Umbrian countryside. Having lived there for some time, she gradually becomes aware of the Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club – a group of Italian ladies who meet once a week for supper, and to talk. Whilst it takes her some time, Marlena eventually manages to be accepted into the group, and begins to cook and eat with these unique and fascinating ladies, sharing both tales of life, love, and death, and taking part in delicious home cooked meals. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091954304</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewUngrateful Refugee|author=Peter Ackroyd|title=Charlie ChaplinDina Nayeri

|summary=Charlie Chaplin dominated Here in the formative years West, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of the cinemathose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, as actor and directoralmost always, like no othermatter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to the world and the situations that refugees find themselves in. As It's rare that we are told find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in an early chapter of this bookintelligent, on his first visit to America powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the middle of a revolution in 1910Iran, he is alleged fleeing to have shouted, ‘I am coming to conquer you. Every man woman and child shall have my name on their lips!’ Within America as a few years he had indeed conquered the entire movieten-year-going world|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287560</amazonuk>old.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sean Smith0857058320|title=Tom Jones - The LifeLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=Few singers have sustained ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a career over half a century journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and appealed to succeeding generations death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the way that Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the former Thomas John Woodward of Treforest has managed to dobook. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. Almost written off during a lean period or two, he proved himself The question at the master centre of re-invention, and now in this book is whether it is possible for his mid-70s he is loved and revered as something of great uncle to be a national treasurehero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000810445X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek Niemann1788037812|title=A Nazi in The Fraternity of the FamilyEstranged: The Hidden Story of an SS Family Fight for Homosexual Rights in Wartime GermanyEngland, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=I'm sure someone somewhere has rewritten The Devil's Dictionary to include Originally passed in 1885, the following – ''family: noun; law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place where the greatest secrets are kept''for 82 years. The Niemann family is no exceptionBut during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. It was long known that grandfather Karl was in Germany during the Second World WarBetween 1891 and 1908, people could easily work that out from three books on the family biographynature of homosexuality appeared. Yet little was spoken ofThey were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, apart from him being an office-bound worker, either in logistics or financeas well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Since Exploring the War two margins of three surviving siblings had relocated to the Glasgow environs, society and there studying homosexuality was even a family quip concerning Goebbels and Gorbals (''family: noun; place where common on the worst things are spoken European Continent, but barely talked about in the best way''). What was a surprise to our authorUK, and many so the publications of his relatives, was that things these men were a lot closer hugely significant – contributing to the former than had been expected, for Karl was such an office worker – for the SS. With a lot of family history finally out of the closet scientific understanding of silent mouthshomosexuality, and with incriminating photographic evidence revealed in unlikely ways, beginning the whole truth can be known. But this is certainly not just of interest to that one small family.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722222</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miranda Richmond Mouillot|title=A Fifty Year Silence|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The story follows the narrator’s quest to find out why her mother’s parents abruptly parted struggle for recognition and never reconciledequality, or even spoke another word to one another. We follow Miranda as she goes backwards and forwards between her Grandmother, whom she is very close to, and her Grandfather, whom she has always found a difficult character. She is determined to get leading to the bottom milestone legalisation of the story which takes her through terrible first hand accounts of events leading up to and throughout World War Two and what Nazi occupied Europe was like for the Jewish. She is driven by the need to know what could cause two people to part so completely after going through so much together, and it’s become her academic life to find outsame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182583</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David GreeneBuckland_Zoo|title=Midnight in SiberiaThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: A Train Journey into the Heart Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of Russianatural history|author=Richard Girling

|summary=Was Grigori Rasputin, As a conservationist in Victorian England before the Siberian peasant turned mystic and the time bomb who almost single-handedly precipitated the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917term existed, Frank Buckland was very much a genuine holy man or an evil-minded reprobate ahead of his time. Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, and total disaster?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178072232X</amazonuk>any biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Allen and Amie ParnesWilliams_Captain|title=HRCCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: State Secrets His Military Life and the Rebirth of Hillary ClintonTimes|author=Ivor George Williams

|summary=Hillary Clinton initially came In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to our attention as First Lady Sydney, Australia: his wife and even then she might have faded into international obscurity had it young son accompanied him. He was not been for destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at the way age of 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in which a difficult position: not only did she managed have their farm to hold her head high during those unfortunate incidents with Bill - wellmanage, HRC wasn't ''involved'' but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Then she re-emerged through was also responsible for the fog of convicts who worked the George W Bush presidency with her bid to gain the Democratic nomination, losing in a hotly contested series of primaries to Barack Obama - and went on to become his Secretary of Stateland. Now the question is whether or not Two years later she will make another run for President in 2016would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099594692</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laura ThompsonPeacock_mountain|title=Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford Into The Biography|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=There can have been few more extraordinary families in British society and cultural life during the early twentieth century than the MitfordsMountain, the six daughters and one son of Baron Redesdale. The only son, killed in action during the Second World War, led an unexceptional life away from the headlines, but four of his sisters more than made up for him. Diana, wife of the notorious Sir Oswald Mosley, never renounced her admiration for Hitler or the Fascist movement, while Unity, who shared her beliefs, shot herself on the day war broke out but lingered pathetically for another brain-damaged eight years, and the fiercely left-wing Jessica became an active member A Life of the American Communist Party. Compared to them Nancy, the eldest and the subject of this biography, seems to have been the most balanced and least eccentric of them all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784082295</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewNan Shepherd|author=Alan Kennedy|title=Oscar & LucyCharlotte Peacock

|summary=With Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the film about Alan Turingapproach, ''The Imitation Game'' getting rave reviews and award nominations right, left and centrebut I also think we sell ourselves short by it, the sterling work done by the Bletchley Park cryptographers during WWII is quite high in our minds. But Enigma wasn't the only code broken and Turing wasn't we sell the only one doing secret but heroic workmyriad lesser-known authors short as well. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>095646968X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=David Lodge|title=Lives in Writing|rating=4|genre=Entertainment|summary=David Lodge Lives in Writing. So blares the cover of while, like most other people I have my editionfavourite genres, and it's not far wrong. When he's not entertaining us with his [[:Category:David Lodge|writing career]] (now in its thirdfavoured authors, more erudite and to me more serious stagewhile, after like most other people I read the first third of comic light touchesreviews and follow up on what appeals, before he found his metier – and fame with TV adaptations– with comedies about the social and sexual lives of academe) he's teaching about and around writing. When I was younger I also read around writing – literature books, in other words – and Lodge's were among those I turned have a third-string tomy reading bow: randomness. So this book and its contents are a welcome step back down a very familiar road.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587769</amazonuk>