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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonny Steinberg1788360702|title=Man of Good HopeCharles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=54

|summary=''A Man of Good Hope'' is the remarkable biography of Asad Abdullahi. It tells the story of a Somalian boy abandoned at eight For over forty years of age and his journey to adulthood. It is also a testament to the human spirit and its capacity to survive. Epic in its scope it covers a journey that stretches the length of the continent of Africa. In a time when the mass migration of people has never been, more in focus it tells the story of what it really means to be a refugee by someone who Prince Charles has experienced it all his life. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099563770</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Johnny Rogan|title= Ray Davies: A Complicated Life|rating= 5|genre= Entertainment|summary= Most of Britain's most popular and successful songwriters of the last 150 years, from Gilbert and Sullivan and Lennon and McCartney, to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, have been partnerships. The only solo writer in the same league is Ray Davies, front man of The Kinks from their formation in 1963 to their final performance in 1994. While this mighty tome is partly an account ardent supporter of the group's tortuous thirty-year history, it is also first alternative medicine and foremost, as the title says, a biography of Davies himselfcomplementary therapies. Through interviews with the Davies brothers, Ray and his younger brother Dave, the group's guitarist and only other constant member of the line-up, other group members, managers, friends and associates, Rogan has given us as complete a book of the man as we are ever likely to get.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554089</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Kate Grenville|title= One Life: My Mother's Story|rating= 5|genre= Biography|summary= This memoir could so easily have become a sentimental tribute to Grenville's mother. But somehowCharles, the author has managed to make it so much more than that. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782116877</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Robert Crawford|title= Young Eliot: From St Louis to The Waste Land|rating= 5|genre= Biography|summary= Did T.S. Eliot like ice-cream? I should really be asking, of course, whether ''TomAlternative Prince'' liked ice-cream, since Robert Crawford in his marvellous biography insists on bringing us into intimate and personal contact with this so closed and impersonal of poets. For many of us, to wonder what this literary giant's favourite flavour of ice-cream was seems a somehow unsuitable curiosity – irreverent or frivolous even – as if to think about his taste for such ordinary pleasures would distract from critically assesses the appreciation for his very momentous achievements in poetry. It is, however, CrawfordPrince's aim to make these kinds of commonplace aspects of T.S. Eliot's life and personality much more familiar to usopinions, as he draws our attention to the poet's childhood years beliefs and youth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955495X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=David P Colley|title=Seeing the War: The Stories Behind aims against the Famous Photographs from World War II|rating=4|genre=History|summary=As anybody could tell, a still photograph is only part background of the truth, if thatscientific evidence. There is a beforehand we don't see, and an after we can only fantasise about unless we know otherwise. Take the famous image are few instances of wartime grunts pushing the flag pole upright – an icon of the War in the Pacific for the US soldiers, his beliefs being vindicated and the films made about Iwo Jima since. But other images his relentless promotion of the war treatments which have been just as long-lasting, and no scientific support has done considerable damage to the people in the photos don't always have movies made reputation of their full story arc. This book is a collection of the images, and a corrective to that narrative lack, giving much more of a full biography with which to pay tribute.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1611687268</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Marcel Ruijters and Laura Watkinson (translator)|title=Hieronymus|rating=4|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=This man who is a book for those who find it amusing that a biography proud of someone who has been dead 500 years is called 'unauthorised'. This is a book where the detail is in the devil – people pissing in the street; the locals baiting blind people armed with cudgels in a pit with a pig, often failing his refusal to whack the beast and hitting their colleagues by mistake; farting demons visiting the sleeper. This is a book for those who don't mind a spot of ribaldryapply evidence-based, an affront logical reasoning 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 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 Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of this incredibly clear Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and readable book is that we Britsseven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, for all our literary heritage, have got nothing like an equivalent but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to Boris PasternakGerman occupation. He or she Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would have never allow what happened to sell like Rowlingescalate in the way that it did, regularly capture but initial protests melted away as the enjoyment and spirit organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1786893452|title=The Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Here in the nation West, we see news reports about immigrants on a la Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremoniesregular basis – some media welcoming them, and at the same time have the cultural heft some scaremongering about them. But all of Larkinthose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, Rushdieand almost always, Graham Greene and more combined. Someone connected with choosing recipients of no matter how deep the Nobel Prize declare him here investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to be the Soviet TS Eliot, but world and the situations thatrefugees find themselves in. It's nothing like. So rare that we find out the journeys from the reader probably has refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to stretch herself to see someone so well-respected do that, in this intelligent, powerful and wellmoving work by Dina Nayeri -loved for his verse, someone who spent twelve years and more on was born in the middle of a hugerevolution in Iran, societyfleeing to America as a ten-year-defining novel, only for the country to nix every plan to get it publishedold.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581345</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marlena de Blasi0857058320|title=The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper ClubLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary= Author Marlena de Blasi lives in ''Lord Of All the (as far as I can tell from having Dead'' is a quick google), beautiful small Italian city of Orvieto – deep journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the beautiful Umbrian countrysideSpanish Civil War. Having lived there for some timeManuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, she gradually becomes aware of is the Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club – a group of Italian ladies figure who meet once a week looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for supper, and to talkthis dictator. Whilst The question at the centre of this book is whether it takes her some time, Marlena eventually manages is possible for his great uncle to be accepted into a hero whilst having fought for 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 mealswrong side. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091954304</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd1788037812|title=Charlie ChaplinThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=4.5

|summary=Charlie Chaplin dominated Originally passed in 1885, the formative law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years . But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of the cinemahomosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as actor well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of society and directorstudying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, like no other. As we are told but barely talked about in an early chapter the UK, so the publications of this book, on his first visit these men were hugely significant – contributing to America in 1910the scientific understanding of homosexuality, he is alleged to have shoutedand beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, ‘I am coming leading to conquer you. Every man woman and child shall have my name on their lips!’ Within a few years he had indeed conquered the entire moviemilestone legalisation of same-going world|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287560</amazonuk>sex relationships in 1967.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sean SmithBuckland_Zoo|title=Tom Jones - The LifeMan Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling

|summary=Few singers have sustained As a career over half a century and appealed to succeeding generations conservationist in Victorian England before the way that the former Thomas John Woodward term existed, Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of Treforest has managed to dohis time. Almost written off during a lean period or twoSurgeon, naturalist, he proved himself the master of re-inventionveterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, and now in his mid-70s he any biographer is loved and revered as something of immediately presented with a national treasurecolourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000810445X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek NiemannWilliams_Captain|title=A Nazi in the FamilyCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: The Hidden Story of an SS Family in Wartime GermanyHis Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams|rating=54

|summary=I'm sure someone somewhere has rewritten The Devil's Dictionary to include In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the following – ''family: noun; place where the greatest secrets are kept''17th Regiment of Foot. The Niemann family is no exception. It was long known that grandfather Karl He was in Germany during command of the Second World War, people could easily work that out troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from the family biography. Yet little was spoken of, apart from him being an office-bound worker, either in logistics or finance. Since the War two of three surviving siblings had relocated Plymouth to the Glasgow environsSydney, Australia: his wife and there was even a family quip concerning Goebbels and Gorbals (''family: noun; place where the worst things are spoken in the best way'')young son accompanied him. What He was not destined to live a surprise to our authorlong life, and many dying suddenly at the age of 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his relatives, was that things were widow in a lot closer difficult position: not only did she have their farm to the former than had been expectedmanage, for Karl but she was such an office worker – also responsible for the SS. With a lot of family history finally out of convicts who worked the closet of silent mouths, and with incriminating photographic evidence revealed in unlikely ways, the whole truth can be knownland. But this is certainly not just of interest to that one small familyTwo years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722222</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Miranda Richmond MouillotPeacock_mountain|title=Into The Mountain, A Fifty Year SilenceLife of Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=The story follows the narrator’s quest to find out why her mother’s parents abruptly parted and never reconciled, or even spoke another word Mostly we choose what books to one another. We follow Miranda as she goes backwards and forwards between her Grandmother, whom she read because there is very close to, so little time and her Grandfatherso many books… I can understand the approach, whom she has always found a difficult character. She is determined to get to the bottom 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 but I also think we sell ourselves short by the need to know what could cause two people to part so completely after going through so much togetherit, and it’s become her academic life to find out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182583</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=David Greene|title=Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=It's no mistake that the cover of my edition of this book is a photo where we sell the Transmyriad lesser-Siberian Railway is horizontal in the frame. It's well known for going east-west, left to right across the map of the largest country by far in the world. 9,288 kilometres from Moscow to the eastern stretches of Russia, it could only be a long, thin line across the cover, authors short as it is in our imagination of it as a form of transport and a travel destination in its own rightwell. So when this book mentions it as the spine or backbone of Russia a couple of timeswhile, that's got to be of a prone Russia – one lying downlike most other people I have my favourite genres, not upright or active. David Greeneand favoured authors, a stalwart of northern American radio journalismand while, uses this book to see just how active or otherwise Russia like most other people I read the reviews and Russians are – and finds their lying down to be quite a definite verdictfollow up on what appeals, as well as I also have a slight indictment. It's no mistake either for this cover third-string to have people in the frame alongside the train carriages, for the people met both riding and living alongside the tracks of the Railway are definitely the ribs of the piecemy reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883709</amazonuk>