==Biography==
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{{newreview
|author=Selina Hastings
|title=The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=These days, W. Somerset Maugham seems to be something of an anachronism. In his heyday, for much of a career which lasted from the end of the Victorian era to the 1950s, he was one of the most successful and widely read of all British writers, with his novels, short stories and plays spawning more film adaptations than any other author. Yet over the last thirty years or so he seems to have slipped from favour, as if his preoccupation with the Edwardian England in which he grew up and his end-of-empire settings are deeply embedded in an age we would rather forget. Moreover, as this very comprehensive biography demonstrates, he was not the most pleasant of individuals. The unhappy child, orphaned by the time he was ten, afflicted with a lifelong stammer and brought up by an aunt and uncle who showed him no affection, grew up to lead a long and unhappy life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719565553</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew McConnell Stott
|summary=In the 1920s two women, one American, one British, settled in the south of France, both for different reasons. Elisabeth Starr had left her home in Philadelphia after an unhappy childhood and the death, possibly suicide, of her fiancé, a nephew of the American President. Drawn to Paris, 'the chosen European city for the sophisticated and well-heeled of the New World', she worked as a nurse during the Great War, then moved to Provence where she made her home in an ancient stone house, the Castello, and took French citizenship. Winifred (Peggy) Fortescue was the wife of the Royal Librarian at Windsor, who retired in 1926 with a knighthood and became a renowned (though hardly successful in financial terms) military historian. After the fall of the pound, it was hard for them to make ends meet in England, and they were drawn to find a property in Provence partly by the lifestyle, partly by a favourable exchange rate.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955832101</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sushila Anand
|title=Daisy: The Lives and Loves of the Countess of Warwick
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Born Daisy Maynard in 1861, the Countess of Warwick lived a colourful life by any standards. She was notoriously promiscuous, a spendthrift who did not hesitate to try and provoke a royal scandal to shore up her parlous finances, and although she relished her lifestyle to the full, she spent several years fighting wholeheartedly for the pioneer socialists in Britain.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749909773</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Lewis
|title=The Blind Side
|rating=4
|genre=Sport
|summary=I think my husband was a little taken aback to see me curled up on the sofa engrossed in a book about American Football. I suppose I should admit that I didn't actually know it was going to be about American Football. Well, I knew it was about a boy who ''played'' American Football, but I'd thought that was just going to be the background story, you know, like in ''Jerry Maguire''. So the first chapter seemed to go on and on forever, and I thought my head might pop from reading about quarterbacks and blind sides and plays and offence and defence and running statistics...but then somehow I stumbled to the real heart of the story; the story of Michael Oher, a young African-American from the slums of Memphis whose father was never around, and whose mother was a drug addict and lost him to social services at a young age.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039333838X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Billy Hopkins
|title=Tommy's World
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Tommy Hopkins was born in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of Manchester. His father had quite a good job and there wasn't a lot of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love and laughter. He was an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in the form of worldly goods. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgings. Even that tenuous security wasn't to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years old.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359585</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Claire Tomalin
|title=Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=I came to this biography having read three of Hardy's novels, two quite recently, and some of his poetry, but knowing very little about him as a person. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably to life in these pages.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jenifer Roberts
|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Graham McCann
|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-Thomas
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=When I was in my early teens, it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five-star British comedy film around. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grin, cigarette holder and inimitable 'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best of all, the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stella Tillyard
|title=A Royal Affair: George III and His Troublesome Siblings
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=King George III was not the luckiest of English sovereigns. America, and then his sons, in that order, gave him no end of grief, and the last few years of his life were clouded by madness. It is thus often overlooked that, before these troubles arose to haunt this most conscientious monarch, he also had a thankless task in trying to control his siblings.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099428563</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tracy Borman
|title=Elizabeth's Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=So many biographies have been written about the life and times of England's longest-lived and longest reigning sovereign that one might wonder whether there is anything new left to say about her. However Tracy Borman has found an interesting new angle – by telling the story of her life through the women closest to her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082264</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James Lever
|title=Me Cheeta
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Straight out of the golden age of Hollywood comes the bitchiest, most revealing memoir from one of its stars. There are scores to be settled, stars to be insulted, secrets to be hinted at none too subtley, and lost opportunities to be longed for. Oh, and the star telling all? Well, for those of you who can't tell from the title (or even the picture on the front cover) it's Cheeta - chimpanzee star of the Tarzan films.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007280165</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philippe Auclair
|title=Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King
|rating=4
|genre=Sport
|summary=Even though I'm not a Manchester United fan, Eric Cantona is one of my all time favourite players and I was really excited to get the opportunity to read a book which was billed as revealing his innermost thoughts, and being the definitive account of his career.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706347</amazonuk>
}}
