Biography
A Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd
Picture the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptor, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridor's of Lord Grimthorpe's mansion. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour of the balconies of the coastal villa at Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrast, energetically inspired to passionate love affairs. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous, like E.M.Forster, Virginia Woolf, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West and then there was that tempestuous iconoclast, D.H.Lawrence. Many such lives were inspired by both landscape and lust, fashioned by each other's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here we learn of talents and beauty that inspires artistic endeavour, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. She, who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends in the pages of annotated diaries which became A Book of Secrets. Full review...
I & I: The Natural Mystics by Colin Grant
Just mention the word reggae, and the name that nearly always springs to mind is that of Bob Marley and the Wailers. The music has always been very much a product of the Jamaican culture, nurtured in years of turbulent history. In this book Colin Grant, born in Britain of Jamaican parents, goes back deep into its roots, and in the process examines the childhood lives of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Neville Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer, to provide an account of the group – but much more than that. Full review...
Dickens: A Memoir of Middle Age by Peter Ackroyd
With publishers falling over each other in an effort to outdo each other in celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth, it was perhaps inevitable that we should see a reappearance of what has become the modern standard life, by Peter Ackroyd. The 1200-page original was first published in 1990, while this 600-page abridged edition surfaced in 1994, and now makes another timely appearance. Full review...
Hemingway's Boat: Everything he loved in life, and lost, 1934-1961 by Paul Hendrickson
This substantial volume is not exactly a full biography of Ernest Hemingway. In fact, it might almost have been subtitled ‘The rise and fall’. Its theme is more or less the second half of his life, from 1934, when he returned from an African safari and took delivery of his boat Pilar, to his tragic death 27 years later. Hendrickson intends it to be an account of the writer, bringing together the different elements of his life – fishing, friendship, wives and family - and above all, naturally, his writing. Full review...
Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times by Sarah Bradford
As a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies of the Queen (published in 1996), of her father George VI, and her daughter-in-law Diana, Sarah Bradford needs little introduction. At around 260 pages of text, this is barely half the length of her other titles, and probably aimed more at the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee market. Full review...
Amy Winehouse: A Losing Game by Mick O'Shea
At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a sad book. Writing this review some five months after her death, now the immediate smoke has cleared, it is apparent from this book (as well as other general sources) that she was a gifted performer, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her for a lengthy career long after scores of aspiring X-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorous, more steady careers. After all, her idols had been not only near-contemporaries like Michael Jackson and Missy Elliott, but also those of an earlier generation such as the classic 1960s girl groups, as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, with whom she was thrilled to record a duet four months before she died. Full review...
Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis
Most historians tend to refer to Edwardian England as the thirteen-year interlude between the Victorian era and the shots at Sarajevo which precipitated the First World War, an era of relative stability. However, there had been ominous rumblings from the new order of things during the two years or so prior to June 1914, particularly from a new spirit among the younger literary generation. The old Victorian writers, notably the uniquely terrible Poet Laureate Alfred Austin (doubtless a very good man, but an almost comically inept writer of verse) were dismissed as irredeemably old hat by the likes of Rupert Brooke and W.H. Davies. For a short time London was the poetry capital of the world, and the book opens with the opening in January 1913 of Harold Monro’s poetry bookshop in Bloomsbury, which rapidly became a magnet for the self-proclaimed Georgian poets and readers. Full review...
Thin Paths: Journeys in and Around an Italian Mountain Village by Julia Blackburn
Julia Blackburn had known Herman for many years, but they had drifted apart. She put the postcard which she received from him in an album: it mentioned a cottage he had discovered in Liguria and which he was renovating. Some time later there was another postcard and an invitation to visit. Over time the cottage would become her home and Herman her husband. 'Thin Paths' is the stories of the people who inhabit this harsh, wild landscape and of the way in which the landscape has formed the people. The thin paths join the people and the places together in a way of life which is rare. Full review...
Yossarian Slept Here by Erica Heller
'To live forever or die in the attempt' was the essential glory in life and living that is at the heart of John Yossarian in Catch 22. This autobiography of the daughter of his creator, Joseph Heller, reveals how the same excitement and joie de vivre suffused throughout the Heller family. The harebrained unpredictability, the madcap exploits and relationships bowl us through this book with terrific pace and verve. Full review...
Chambers Biographical Dictionary by Chambers and Joan Bakewell
It's now the ninth edition of this famous volume and that came as a bit of a shock when I glanced at the bookcase and realised that my copy dated back to 1974 and was still in regular use for a quick guide as to who might have been who. It's advertised as 'the great, the good, the not-so-great and the downright wicked' and it's difficult to better that summary. It has eighteen thousand biographies and differs from Who's Who with it's thirty thousand entries in that covers the dead as well as the living and the interesting rather than those who need to be included because they have achieved a certain position. Full review...
Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin
Having already written biographies of Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen, among others, to say nothing of a study of Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan, Claire Tomalin is admirably qualified to produce a major life of the author to mark the bicentenary of his birth in 1812. (Sadly, she says this will be her last large-scale book). Full review...
You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes by Jermaine Jackson
It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson in the two years since his sudden passing will be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge of his life and death, there will surely be few if any to rival this account by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve Dennis. Full review...
Nine Lives of William Shakespeare by Graham Holderness
There is a subtle irony in the fact that the world’s best-known playwright, and possibly the most famous author of all time, is a character about whom so little is known for certain. Nevertheless, as we are looking at someone who died nearly 400 years ago, the indisputable documentary evidence is bound to be lacking. Full review...
Dickens's Women: His Life and Loves by Anne Isba
The subject of the several women in the life of Charles Dickens might at first glance seem an unusual theme to build a biography around, but this fairly brief but penetrating book serves its purpose well. The author’s foreword begins by telling us that Dickens was a man who 'craved a love so unconditional that the yearning was unlikely to be satisfied in this world, a man in thrall to a vision of a womanhood so idealized that it was incompatible with everyday domesticity'. Full review...
Disaster was my God by Bruce Duffy
The life of Arthur Rimbaud must be one of the most outrageous in literary history, more scandalous than Wilde, more self-destructive than Malcolm Lowery, Rimbaud was the boy poet and iconoclast who took on the literary establishment at end of the nineteenth century and won. So Duffy's fictional account, based closely around the actual facts of Rimbaud's life, was bound to be an exciting and furious, and he doesn't disappoint. This is a difficult book to put down. Full review...
Machiavelli: A Life Beyond Ideology by Paul Oppenheimer
Machiavelli, 'the first philosopher to define politics as treachery', has probably been better known as an adjective, Machiavellian being a synonym for duplicity in statecraft, than as a historical person. Interestingly, the term 'Machiavel' became common in English usage as an adjective and noun around 1570, although none of his works were translated into the language for another seventy years or so after that. Full review...
The Silent Weaver by Roger Hutchinson
There is no question but that the story of Angus has all the right ingredients for a fascinating study. Taken from his Scottish Lowlands agricultural early childhood to the isolation of a Hebridean island of South Uist, joining the last ever horse platoon in the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, then mental breakdown and effective incarceration for almost all the rest of his life, he created some of the most unusual works of folk art that have existed this century. And Hutchison tackles every angle of this rich narrative, exploring the military thinking behind how horse regiments were to combat Hitler, through to the operations of mental health care in later twentieth century Scotland, and all points in between. Full review...
Tintin: Herge and His Creation by Harry Thompson
I love Tintin. I love his quiff and his innocence, his plus-fours and his foreign adventures, I love Snowy the dog and most of all I love Captain Haddock and the flamboyance of his blistering barnacles language. So I was thrilled to see a biography of the character and Hergé, his creator, and I picked it up with enthusiasm. Full review...
Pevsner: The Early Life: Germany and Art by Stephen Games
Nikolai Pewsner – the minor changes of name came as a young adult - was born in Saxony in 1902 into a Russian-Jewish family. Just too young to avoid having to take part in the war, he had studied art history at no less than four universities by the age of 22. He then became an assistant keeper at the Dresden Gemaldegalerie, and four years later he was appointed lecturer at Gottingen University. Full review...
The Sun King by Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford assumes that you'll need no introduction to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he was four years old and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the reigns of Charles I, James II, William III and into the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne. He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era. Full review...
Finding Poland by Matthew Kelly
Looking at any historical map of Poland anyone may see how its borders have changed over the centuries. Where will you find the Polish home? One answer must be that it is founded deep in the hearts of the Polish people who fought for the liberty and the integrity of the Polish homeland. Now consider the promontory of land around Vilnius, or Wilno as it was then known, which was contained inside Poland in 1921. It was an area in which the small market town of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings and just large enough to warrant a town hall, was situated. These wild borderlands – known as the Kresy - were fought over for centuries by Austrians, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. It was here that Matthew Kelly's great-grandfather, who had imbibed the values and élan of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach with his clever young wife, Hanna. They were deeply committed to progress through education and to peaceably raising their two little daughters. However, the dreadful and calamitous year of 1939, was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in the most cynical pact. Full review...
Dinner with Churchill: The Prime Minister's Tabletop Diplomacy by Cita Stelzer
Winston Churchill was never a man to don the hair shirt. A comfortable upbringing in the days when elaborate multiple courses were the done thing imbued in him from an early age a taste for the good things in life, and a bon viveur he remained until the very end. Throughout his life he loved his food, and until near the end of his life, his appetite and digestion remained excellent, whereas many men in their advancing years might have cut back a little. Full review...
Furniture with Soul: Master Woodworkers and Their Craft by David Savage
David Savage is a master furniture maker and one of the artists featured in the book, so he is not – as he says himself – a neutral observer and nor can he be neutral in choosing who to include in the book. Having said that, the pictures alone will tell you that he has chosen people who create furniture of great beauty and – often – originality. It's the text that makes the book shine, though – as it seeks not to give a critical appreciation of each man and one woman's work, but to look at what makes them tick, what drives them on and how they have handled the good times as well as the bad. It is, if you like, ten in-depth biographies of artists who work in a common medium and ten shorter pieces about those we should look out for in the future. Full review...
Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan by D R Thorpe
The great-grandson of a crofter, and son-in-law of a Duke, Harold Macmillan was born in London in 1894. Despite the well-to-do aristocratic background, his years as a young adult were marked by bad experiences in the trenches which left him with lifelong war wounds, and his early service as a Conservative Member of Parliament by the plight of the unemployed in his first constituency of Stockton. He had much in common with another future Prime Minister, Winston Churchill; both had American mothers, and both were mavericks who were elected as Conservatives but refused to toe the party line too steadfastly. Full review...
Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend by Robert Ross
Some years ago, I was given a Penguin edition of Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', with what looked like an uniquely fearsome face on the front cover. A year or two later, I saw a photograph of Marty Feldman and was convinced he must have inspired it if not actually been the model. Full review...
The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life by Bettany Hughes
We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still so relevant so long after his death, his life is something of a mystery. He didn't like to write things down, and so Hughes begins this book by saying that it may have something of a 'Socrates-sized hole' in it. What we do see is the city of Athens, and the hugely important changes which were going on there while Socrates was alive. In Athens we see the beginnings of democracy, the seedlings of some of the ideas that we take for granted today, such as freedom of speech, and the right to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development of modern values, and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinker, he was also a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating to be around. Full review...
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
Stacey Schiff's biography starts more of less from Cleopatra's infamous meeting with Caesar, where she sneaks into his rooms in a sack. This is one of the most popular images of Cleopatra in the public consciousness and Schiff happily refutes the image of her emerging as a well polished seductress, pointing out that anyone who had been carried in a sack for a considerable period of time will more likely be fairly dishevelled. Schiff takes us through from this moment up to Cleopatra's much dramatised death, and beyond, to the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Full review...
The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown
The Diana Chronicles was first published in 2007, ten years after Diana's untimely death (forgive me if I proffer information that you already know, but prior to reading this book, I was one of the small group of people in this country happily oblivious to the Princess Diana industry). The book has been re-released in shocking pink, white and gold livery, as a 'commemorative edition' to coincide with The Royal Wedding. A fanciful Foreword now imagines Diana's life and reaction to Will and Kate's marriage, had she survived. Full review...
How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay by Frances Wilson
As I read 'How to Survive the Titanic' I was conscious that we're only a matter of months away from the centenary of the sinking – and a slew of media to mark the occasion. Given that the subject has been mined extensively over the years it will be interesting to see whether there's anything new to be said about the tragedy. It's a subject which has always fascinated me – and it was with a sense of anticipation that I opened the book. Full review...
Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan: His Life and Character by Andrew Crowther
Gilbert and Sullivan were the Rice and Lloyd Webber of the late Victorian era. Some might regard their work as slightly dated these days, especially the satirical lyrics which were so much a product of their time, but their appeal has never really faded and it surely never will. Full review...
Thackeray by D J Taylor
Today, William Makepeace Thackeray is remembered almost exclusively as the writer of 'Vanity Fair', considered as among the greatest novels of its time. Yet he was a prolific writer, also responsible for 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes', as well as several sketches, essays and much poetry. However most of his work is largely forgotten today, while as a person he remains little known, and he has been somewhat overshadowed by his better-known contemporary, old friend and rival Charles Dickens, born one year later. This biography does an excellent job in rescuing him from such semi-obscurity. Full review...
J K Rowling: the Mystery of Fiction by Lindsey Fraser
Easily one of the most renowned authors of the 21st century, J.K. Rowling's incredibly successful Harry Potter series shook the core of the literary world. It provoked a reaction, the likes of which have never been seen before, and likely never will. A unique set of factors combined in order for the Harry Potter books to reach the level of success they enjoyed, and these factors are explored in this biography of Rowling. It is difficult not to be fascinated by the person who is responsible for the phenomenon that is Harry Potter, and although writing is a profession that doesn't have a typical path by which it can be reached, Rowling's story is anything but orthodox, and her personal 'rags to riches' story only enhances the Harry Potter legacy. Full review...
Sir William Knighton: The Strange Career of a Regency Physician by Charlotte Frost
Sir William Knighton came from humble beginnings: in later life the memories of his mother selling butter and eggs from a market stall would frequently be brought up and it was never to illustrate just how well he'd done. The fact that he became a physician would normally be quite an achievement, but his baronetcy and fame didn't come from his work as a physician but from his less well-publicised work for George IV. Although his work at court would span just over a decade it was far from being what he wanted to do – and for the most part it would not bring him a great deal of happiness. At the end of his career as a physician he simply wanted to retire to his cottage in the country - but found himself unable to desert a king who had become dependent on him. Full review...
As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil: The Impossible Life of Mary Benson by Rodney Bolt
Since I hadn't previously heard of Archbishop Benson, let alone his wife, I must commend the title, cover and advertising of this book. All of the above provided an accurate and irresistible glimpse of the biography within, and I wasn't one whit disappointed in my choice. Full review...
Lady Blue Eyes: My Life With Frank Sinatra by Barbara Sinatra
Barbara Blakeley, born in 1926, was married firstly to Robert Oliver, an executive, with whom she had a son, and secondly to Zeppo Marx. But it was the already thrice-married and thrice-divorced Francis Albert Sinatra, whom she had idolized as a singer for a long time, with whom she would make her most enduring marriage, and vice versa. They tied the knot in 1976, and stayed together until his death in 1998. Full review...
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
People's preconceptions about Malcolm X are vast. This is no surprise given his dramatic life, untimely death, and subsequent increased fame through the likes of Spike Lee's 1992 film. His autobiography is a must-read for anyone interested in his life, or the tumultuous race struggle in the US in the 1960s, but it must be viewed in context. It was completed after Malcolm X's death, by co-author Alex Haley, and many aspects were highlighted or played down, to suit Malcolm X's ends. Manning Marable's biography, years in the making, looks at his life with a new perspective. Full review...
The Unreliable Life of Harry the Valet: The Great Victorian Jewel Thief by Duncan Hamilton
The story of Harry the Valet may not be particularly familiar to modern readers, but he was something of a celebrity in the Victorian age. He achieved notoriety by stealing thousands of pounds worth of jewels from the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland - much to the delight of many people who disliked the lady, which appears to have been pretty much everyone who ever met her. Having pulled off this audacious theft, Harry seemed to be invincible - but he was brought down by his love for a Gaiety Girl, and ended up facing a trial which the papers fell over themselves to report on. Full review...
The Fetish Room by Redmond O'Hanlon and Rudi Rotthier
An ongoing debate in our family has centred on the value of biographies, particularly of writers. I've always loved the touchstone of the places people lived and wrote, the banality of their lives, the detail, the insight, and the fact that it can tell you everything or nothing at all about the work. My Dad held that the work was what mattered; the rest is just social history. He said that almost disparagingly, which is odd, because if you presented it as social history rather than biography, he'd lap it up. I guess I just don't make the distinction. Full review...
House of Exile: War, Love and Literature, from Berlin to Los Angeles by Evelyn Juers
Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kröger-Mann were in a constant state of hazardous exile after the rise of fascism in Germany in 1933. He became like Zola, his favourite author, a socially committed novelist and political activist and fierce critic of militarism. He was convivial, having a wide circle of friends that contained many creative artists, playwrights, socialists. He seemed drawn to the bohemians and the demi-monde. This elegant and sometimes formal gentleman came from the Hanseatic town of Lubeck where his father belonged to a renowned grain merchant family. These might be described as the haute-bourgeoisie. There was an unusual degree of sibling rivalry between him and his less robust brother, the famous author of The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann. Hendrick possessed a sensual nature and fell passionately and easily in love with a number of women. Of these his relationship with Nelly, a fascinating woman, a seamstress and nightclub hostess, as full of contradictions as himself, was the most successful and long lasting. She followed him on the long painful journey into exile at first in Nice and later to the United States. Full review...
Let Not The Waves of the Sea by Simon Stephenson
The book opens after the catastrophic event and the narrator/author Simon is in the local area of Phi Phi. He describes it in glowing terms (which may sound a little strange) as he aims, on a rather arduous climb, to be rewarded with a stunning view. And immediately I'm struck with Stephenson's lilting style of writing. For example, ' ... an elderly lady carrying bags of rice over each shoulder as if they were no more than foam guesthouse pillows.' How lovely and evocative is that, I'm thinking to myself. Full review...
John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman
For part of my formative years, John Lennon was one of the four most famous people in the world. All that we have learnt about him in the thirty years or so since his death has kept his name firmly in the public eye, if not always for the best of reasons. At over 800 pages, this is one of the lengthiest biographies written about the extraordinary life and times of the former Beatle. It's also surely one of the most impartial. Full review...