Autobiography
Small Memories by Jose Saramago
Having been born in 1922 and lived through so much of the twentieth century, with an author's view of change and people, Jose Saramago has certainly experienced a lot. Civil Wars in the neighbouring Spain; the growth of his country - which still left it as western Europe's poorest. Here he allows us witness to his mind drifting through his childhood, in the country and in Lisbon, and provides a subtle and gentle memoir. Full review...
Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft
John Peel was without doubt one of the most important disc jockeys of all time. Born in Merseyside in 1939, he began his career in mid-60s America before returning home to join Radio London and then become one of the original Radio 1 team, where he stayed until his death 37 years later. I admired the man for his passion for playing the music nobody else would give the time of day (even if I didn't always enjoy it myself) and his readiness to say exactly what he thought, even if it was not what his employers at the BBC wanted to hear, and I always enjoyed reading his columns in the music weeklies and later Radio Times. Nevertheless I found much of his show unlistenable towards the end, recall some of his rather curmudgeonly remarks on air (guest slots on Radio 1's Round Table review programme come to mind), and thought his build-'em-up, knock-'em-down stance rather irritating after a while. So I approached this book with an open mind as a fan, but not an uncritical one. Full review...
Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand
Born in Hastings in May 1957, after leaving Brunel University with a degree in social sciences, Jo Brand unsuccessfully applied for a research job with Channel 4 on a series about racism, then worked for a time as a psychiatric nurse at the South London Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital. But the lure of showbiz proved too strong, and stardom in stand-up comedy soon beckoned. Full review...
Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S Thompson by Anita Thompson (Editor)
It is almost 40 years since Dr Hunter S Thompson's seminal work Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas first graced the shelves. His gonzo style, putting himself at the centre of the story, should tell readers as much about the person doing the writing as the event he is describing. If that's the case then what is to be learned from a selection of interviews with the main man himself then? The answer is plenty. Full review...
Stirred But Not Shaken: The Autobiography by Keith Floyd
I grew up with television cookery programmes and still have some recipes in my childish handwriting, which begin 4oz SR fl 2oz marg 2oz C sug… as I battled to copy what was on the screen before we retuned to the presenter. Programmes stagnated as the cook spoke to camera and lectured the viewer on how to make sponge cake or a fish dish. Then we were shocked awake. There was a man, quite good-looking in a raffish, slightly dangerous sort of way, who cooked on the deck of a trawler or wherever the whim took him, always glass in hand and who was quite capable of berating the cameraman about how he was doing his job. Like him, or hate him – you could not help but know that he was Keith Floyd, or Floydy to millions. Full review...
Rockers and Rollers: An Automotive Autobiography by Brian Johnson
Brian Johnson will probably go down as one of the luckiest men in showbiz. He had a brief moment of glory in the early 70s as vocalist with Geordie, a Tyneside version of Slade, who had three Top 40 hits and then fell on hard times. After going back to the day job, a chance call invited him to go and audition for AC/DC, whose vocalist Bon Scott had suddenly died. Three decades later, not only have the group held on to their loyal fanbase, but one of their albums, according to an online source, is second only to Michael Jackson's Thriller in terms of global sales. Full review...
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
Esteemed author, Susan Hill challenges herself to a year of not buying books, and re-reading some of her vast collection: not a terribly original idea, but an intriguing one nonetheless. Most avid readers will no doubt have made similar vows at some point in their lives (I know I have…) Early in the memoir, Ms Hill does admit that for professional purposes she will continue to review books sent to her - but buying/obtaining for pleasure, is to be out of bounds. In the course of guiding us through her vast and eclectic collection, scattered throughout her home, she also sets herself the task of choosing her top 40 books - and comes up with a very erudite selection. Full review...
I'll Tell Me Ma: A Childhood Memoir by Brian Keenan
Keenan memorably told the story of his years as a hostage in Beirut in An Evil Cradling. Now he turns to his childhood. Anyone who had an urban upbringing in the 1950's will find themselves saying I remember that! at intervals throughout this book. Senior Service cigarettes, Pontefract cakes, the rag and bone man, the Lone Ranger, family photographs kept in an old biscuit tin, Dad polishing everyone's shoes, the realisation that there was a wider world beyond the city streets…These are some of the things that brought back my own memories – what can you find? Full review...
A Life Like Other People's by Alan Bennett
It was his mother's illness which triggered Alan Bennett's excursions into his family background. The bout of depression hadn't cleared as the family had hoped and admission to hospital was the next step in the treatment. Asked if there had been anything like this before, Bennett said not, failing to notice his father's hand gently touch his knee. The son was educated at Oxford and had even been seen on the television. He did the talking rather than the father, reluctant butcher and a man not given to putting himself forward. Full review...
Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One by Elliott J Gorn
John Dillinger was born and brought up in Indiana. His childhood was no better and no worse than most but the early part of his adult life was to be blighted by a spell in prison when he was convicted of an attack on a man in a botched hold-up. Hoping for leniency he pleaded guilty but was sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment, whilst the man with him pleaded not guilty and when convicted received a shorter sentence. It's easy to see where Dillinger's contempt for the law was spawned. Full review...
Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family by Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia
Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia worked for the FBI. That might sound rather glamorous but Jack had a special claim to fame. He was one of those rare people who always worked undercover – not just for hours or days at a time but sometimes for years. In Making Jack Falcone he tells the story of how he came to infiltrate the Mafia in New York and was responsible for a string of arrests which crippled the organised crime families. If that doesn't sound impressive enough, then just consider that Jack Garcia was a Cuban-born American and he went undercover as an Italian amongst Italians. Full review...
My Family and Other Disasters by Lucy Mangan
Not living in the UK means that we don't have British newspapers. Even when we lived in England, we never bought The Guardian, so I had never actually heard of Lucy Mangan before being sent this book. That's probably not a bad thing, since I began the book - a collection of her Guardian columns - without any preconceptions. Full review...
Magnificent Desolation by Buzz Aldrin
It seems the first thing one does when one lands on the moon is go through all but the final steps in the process of flying straight back up - just in case. The first thing one does when one steps down on to the moon is to make sure you can step back up into your lunar module - just in case there's a panic somewhere. The first thing one does when land back on earth - you would think - would be to have the same urgency to get back up and out there, but life has a habit of getting in the way. Full review...
Memories of the Rare Old Times: Through The Eyes of a Dubliner by Bernard P Morgan
This is the story of Bernard Morgan, one of nine children growing up in Dublin in the 50s. As a boy Bernard tells us about his love of football and boxing. He played truant from school, preferring to smoke cigarettes instead and, as he got older, he hung around in gangs with his brothers and friends. We hear of the wars they had, and how the Irish stick by one another. Finally we see him go to England where he tries to find work, sleeping rough and living on nothing. Along the way we meet the street people of Dublin and above all Bernard's family. Full review...
Silenced by Vicky Jaggers
Vicky Jaggers had a dreadful childhood. One sister was in a home following an accident which made her violent and her elder brother, David, was obviously her mother's favourite. He was very intelligent, but disliking any sort of work his abilities were directed towards getting what he wanted without making any effort. The family moved house regularly as Vicky's father looked for work and schooling soon became an option which wasn't always chosen. Sexually mature at the age of nine and looking much older than her years she took to spending much of her time in the pubs her parents ran and it was whilst her parents were serving in the bar that David raped her – on three successive nights – when she was only twelve. Her pregnancy wasn't evident for six months. Full review...
Enabled: One Disabled Woman's Incredible Story of Tackling Her Disability in Pursuit of a Lifelong Dream by Ruth Merry and Steve Emecz
Ruth Merry has never been your common-or-garden young lady. Born with no ability to move her legs, and more, due to a condition called arthrogryposis, she still became an avid equestrian, downhill skier, competitive swimmer, fund-raiser and more. At the beginning of this book a flippant comment inspires another, future dream - that of going down in a four-man bobsleigh. Full review...
The Secret Life of France by Lucy Wadham
I'm rather at a loss to describe this book for you, and I'm still uncertain how to categorise it. It's part personal memoir and part analytical. Whether you regard this particular mix as brilliant or irritating is down, I suppose, to personal taste and intellectual curiosity. Full review...
An Education by Lynn Barber
Lynn Barber comes from the lower, unremembered, orders on both sides. There is no ancestral home or village – just parents who were determined that she should work hard and make something of herself. Well, they were – until Simon proposed and it was explained to her that Oxford didn't really matter, that being married to a good man would be more important. Simon was much older – older in fact than he would admit to – and he picked Lynn up (quite literally) at a bus stop when she was just sixteen. Surprisingly her parents were unworried by this and threw them together, despite the fact that Simon, who was in the property business, had some strange friends. In the nineteen fifties it wasn't every sixteen year old girl who had a passing acquaintance with the evil slum landlord, Peter Rachman. Full review...
Bete de Jour by Stan Cattermole
Something's just come in that might appeal to you, said Sue from The Bookbag, having just taken delivery of Bête de Jour. Pleased to be thought of, I never mustered the courage to ask whether this thought was motivated by a previous liking for bloke lit, or by the book's subtitle: The Intimate Adventures of an Ugly Man. Full review...
Closing Time by Joe Queenan
Joe Queenan made good despite a deprived and neglected childhood. His world was a far cry from the middle class background of most aspiring writers of his generation. He grew up in Philadelphia, born to parents so immersed in their own problems that they made little attempt to love or care for their four children. Practically the only way his father provided a role model was in his love of reading. Otherwise, he was an alcoholic, frequently beating his young children. Full review...
The Night of the Gun by David Carr
When you decide to take drugs for the first time, according to most, it's rarely a class 'A' variety - usually it's kids messing around with cannabis. This is how David Carr began his love affair with illicit substances, clearly not even for one second imagining what it would eventually do to him and everyone around him. Full review...
The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir by Cylin Busby and John Busby
When my dad dies, his body will go to the Harvard Medical School at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, though I suspect they are mostly interested in his head... His was in an interesting case - the lower half of his jaw was removed when he was shot in the head with a shotgun. His tongue was torn in half, his teeth and gums blown away, leaving a bit of bone that was once his chin connected with dangling flesh at the front of his face. Full review...
Lord of the Rams: The Greatest Story Never Told by Ronan Smith
When you read Lord of the Rams you could be forgiven for thinking that you're hearing about someone with a split personality. Our author, Ronan Smith, is a true gentleman and a real delight when you're exchanging pleasantries. He's good to his mother and not just because he doesn't get home that often. Then we have the subject of his autobiography – Rambo, Lord of the Rams or, more usually, simply the Rams. You'll find it unnerving that the author speaks of his other self in the third person - and that's before we get to the strange nicknames which people acquire, the fact that there's nothing which can't be made into a joke and the drinking… Full review...
Upfront and Personal: The Autobiography by Coleen Nolan
As a child, I was a huge fan of the Nolan Sisters. When I'm in the Mood for Dancing hit the charts in 1979, I was ten years old. Bernie was my favourite Nolan at the time and in recent years, I have enjoyed watching her acting in shows like The Bill. Full review...
Grumpy Old Rock Star by Rick Wakeman
Rick Wakeman wrote and published a more conventional autobiography, Say Yes! in 1985, and it has so far never been updated. This, written with the aid of ghost-writer Martin Roach, takes a totally different approach, being a selection of episodes from his sixty years in more or less random order. In theory it might seem rather disjointed, but in practice it works brilliantly. Full review...
The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle de Jour
Following the recent success with ITV2's highly-publicised TV version of Belle de Jour's online blog, starring Billie Piper, it comes as no surprise that sales for her 2005 book, The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, sky-rocketed. After all, who doesn't want to hear all the profound details of working in the London sex trade? Full review...
How Could He Do It? by Emma Charles
Emma Charles was on the edge of thinking that she and her family were doing quite well. They were an ordinary family – mum, dad, two daughters, three dogs, a rabbit and a couple of guinea pigs. Sprinkle in an Open University course for Mum, private schooling for the girls, a nice car in the drive of the nice house, good clothes and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with the way that life was going.
Then her fifteen year old daughter, Tamsin, gave her a note, couched in graphic terms, saying that her father had been sexually abusing her for the past five years. In moments the family's life fell apart. Gone were all the certainties, the hopes and the expectations. In came the police, Social Services and Child Protection Officers. Full review...
Pilgrim State by Jacqueline Walker
I was intrigued and touched by Jacqueline Walker's beautiful memoir of her childhood in Jamaica and London in the 1960's. This is a book inevitably compared with Andrea Levy's Small Island. It follows similar ground, but the main difference and great strength, is that it's the real narrative of mother and daughter. As a girl I was familiar with areas of London where Jackie Walker lived and heard some members of my family denigrate Caribbean immigrants. From this memoir, I've garnered much about the lived experience of my less advantaged contemporaries. Full review...
The Parish by Alice Taylor
Ours are hard times for humanity - for a number of reasons. Firstly, we don't talk to each other much. Second, we don't care about each other much - or at least enough to outwardly show it.
We would rather walk a mile when it's raining cats and dogs than knock on a neighbours' door asking for a cup of sugar. Maybe that's just me, but look around you - pregnant women struggle to get a seat on the train, 12-year olds get accidentally shot in a supermarket lane, and it's acceptable to throw a tantrum over wrong hair colour. Full review...
Farewell To The East End by Jennifer Worth
I am interested in social history and, as a mother, the job of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjects, Farewell to the East End is a riveting read. The author Jennifer Worth was a midwife and nurse, working with the nuns at Nonnatus House in the East End of London and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950s. Full review...
The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson
If you're a reader of The Chicago Tribune then Amy Dickinson will be a familiar name; for those of us on the other side of the pond (and not the one at Chicago's back door) it's a name that's vaguely familiar but not one which you can readily place. Amy was the replacement for Ann Landers, probably the most influential American woman of the late twentieth century and the most widely read agony aunt of her age with an estimated ninety million readers. So, what was it about Amy Dickinson which propelled her into a job which must have been a dream and a nightmare combined? In The Mighty Queens of Freeville we meet Amy, her daughter Emily and the women of Amy's family who were their support. Full review...
Ruth Maier's Diary: A Young Girl's Life Under Nazism by Ruth Maier, Jamie Bulloch (Translator) and Jan Erik Vold (Editor)
I was looking forward to reading Ruth Maier's Diary as I am interested in the history surrounding World War Two and its victims and survivors. I am especially fascinated by social history and how the lives of ordinary people were affected by events beyond therir control.
Ruth was born in 1920 and died on arrival in Auschwitz in 1942, aged only twenty-two. She was born in Austria and lived there with her parents and sister, Judith. But in 1939, life there was becoming much harder for Jews, so Judith was sent to England and Ruth to Norway, where she lived with the Strom family in Lillestrom. Full review...
Disfigured: A Saudi Woman's Story of Triumph over Violence by Rania Al-Baz
Throughout her life Rania Al-Baz has been an unusual woman. She was married off by her father when she was still at school to a man she hardly knew and was the only married pupil, forced to conform to the Saudi Arabian traditions of putting her husband first in all things but still expected to keep up with her school work. Pregnancy forced her to give up on her schooling but the marriage failed and Rania returned to her father. It might have been expected that she would fade quietly into the home, but in a most unusual step she became the smiling face on a Saudi television programme. No woman had ever been a news anchor before and it was only to be expected that there would be plenty of men wanting to marry her. Full review...
The Music Room by William Fiennes
William Fiennes grows up in a castle (Broughton Castle, in fact - but we're not told directly which one). It sounds a dream upbringing - a large library, chances of ice-skating round the moat, film crews dropping in to record TV and heritage cinema, a host of culture and nature at hand. But like so many castles of fiction there is a bogeyman hampering out and out joy. In this case it is William's oldest brother, Richard. Full review...
Shooting the Cook by David Pritchard
David Pritchard would have you believe that he was a bumbling TV producer and that he, almost by accident, discovered two men who would go on to become celebrity chefs. The first, Keith Floyd, was a revelation to viewers as he slurped a glass (or two) of wine, said exactly what you thought he shouldn't have said and cooked amazing food in one exotic location after another. After the stultifying programmes made by the likes Fanny Craddock he was a breath of fresh air and like or loathe him there was no way that you could be ambivalent. The second man, Rick Stein, was an entirely different, er, kettle of fish. Quiet, thoughtful and decidedly more erudite – it was difficult to imagine two more diverse personalities, but he brought out the best of both and made programmes which stay in the mind years later. Full review...
War Child: A Boy Soldier's Story by Emmanuel Jal
Emmanuel Jal, internationally successful rap artist, spent his childhood as a solider in his native Sudan. He has written his story in order to help those children who are still fighting, and those who have managed to get away. There are a number of books about the Sudan by western aid workers and journalists, who do, I am sure, write fluently and passionately about the horror of Darfur. This is the first book that I have read which tells the story of war from the point of view of a small boy carrying an AK-47, a gun taller than he is himself. Full review...
A View from the Foothills by Chris Mullin
Chris Mullin's diaries cover the period from July 1999 to May 2005 during which time he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, for the Department for International Development and after a period on the back benches also at the Foreign Office. As he says, there will be no shortage of memoirs from those who have occupied the Olympian Heights. In A View from the Foothills he offers a refreshingly different perspective – that of a man at the lowest levels of government who's party to what's happening further up the hillside and down on the plains. Full review...
Dragonslippers: This is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like by Rosalind Penfold
So, a five star book where we can predict the entire plot, and at times foretell just what people in it say. It's a damning indictment of things that that is even possible.
This book lives by its subtitle – this is what an abusive relationship looks like. Rosalind meets a man who seems nigh-on perfect – they seem to fall in love with ease, and she gets on very well with his four children from an earlier marriage. Then odd occurrences start to happen – he declares her work getting in his way, he possibly drinks a bit too much, he sees flirting in her shop-talk with other men. And things escalate and escalate, and – you know every stage. She suffers a guilt trip, before suffering physical violence, discovering affairs, getting back with him, then finding the right kind of help. Full review...
Shoot the Damn Dog by Sally Brampton
There's a stigma attached to mental illness. If you have cancer you can tell the world about it and expect its sympathy. If you have depression it's seen as a character flaw and one about which you had best keep quiet, pull yourself together and get on with things the way that normal people have to. And it's this cloak of shame and secrecy which has the dual effect of pushing people further into depression and dissuading them from seeking the help which they so desperately need. Sally Brampton has set out to blast away this stigma by telling her own story. Full review...