==Biography==
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{{newreview
|author=Philip Norman
|title=John Lennon: The Life
|rating=5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000719742X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Hilary Spurling
|summary=The book jacket states that this is 'the untold story of an African family' and with a presidential photograph of Barack Obama, the book is certainly eye-catching. Along with, I'm sure, millions of others, I've read 'The Audacity Of Hope' and was charmed and blown away in almost equal measure, so I was keen to get started on this book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092725</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stefan Klein
|title=Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the World
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This excellent combination of science history and biography starts with the most populist and some of the most awkwardly scientific. Basically it throws modern-day science at the Mona Lisa, which you might think is a little unfair – can she cope with being analysed, and the neuroscience we now know used in interpreting her? Of course she can – she’s the world’s best-known masterpiece of Italian art, and she’s survived much worse. Klein’s approach fully works, when we see also the science da Vinci did know and that he worked on himself, which all helps us know partly why the truths of La Gioconda are still unknowable.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818256</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Valerie Grove
|title=So Much To Tell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Kaye Webb’s career would be the envy of many a young bookworm. From 1961 to 1978 she ran Puffin Books, the children’s division of Penguin. I still have some paperbacks from that time with “Kaye Webb – Editor” on the first page inside the front cover.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142008</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matt MacAllester
|title=Bittersweet: Lessons from my Mother's Kitchen
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Matt MacAllester is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, used to covering the horrors of war, but nothing prepared him for his investigation into the life and death of his mother Anne. In May 2005 Ann MacAllester died suddenly of a heart attack and her son was overwhelmed by grief. This might not sound unusual, but his mother had been largely absent from him for about a quarter of a century, trapped in her own private world of madness. His earliest memories were of an idyllic childhood, where wonderful food was always at the centre of family life and with the help of Elizabeth David, his mother’s favourite cookery writer he sought to find his mother through the food she cooked.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408800942</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Welch and Lucian Randall
|title=Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Redheads, they say, feel more pain than the rest of us. They may even have a layer of skin too few. However literally true this might be, it certainly seems to be the case for Vivian Stanshall. As his second wife says in this excellent book, 'There's nothing between him and all the sensations the world has to give us'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841156795</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Donald Spoto
|title=High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood
|rating=3
|genre=Biography
|summary=In his defence, we must acknowledge Spoto's subtitle. It underlines that this does not in any way shape or form claim to be a biography of the American actress who become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. It is an analysis of her film career: a consideration of the "Hollywood years".
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515377</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alison Maloney
|title=St George: Let's Hear it for England!
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=I was a bit of a patriot, even when it wasn't as fashionable as it is now becoming. Perhaps this is due to my once having played St. George in a Cub Scout celebration and getting the chance to personally slay the dragon in knitted chain mail with a plastic sword. In a world where being English has become synonymous with football violence and the flag of St. George is being used by a political party condemned as racist, it's perhaps unsurprising that more people celebrate St. Patrick's Day than St. George's Day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092628</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Douglas Rogers
|title=The Last Resort
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Author Douglas Rogers is a Zimbabwean who moved away
from the country many years ago, but has never been able to persuade
his parents – two white farmers, Lyn and Roz – to follow him out of
their homeland, despite the resettlement policies of Robert Mugabe,
the hyper-inflation, and the corruption in the country. Instead, the
pair just wanted to stay on the farm welcoming people to Drifters,
their backpackers' lodge.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906021910</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tracy Kidder
|title=Strength in What Remains
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary='Strength in What Remains' is the inspirational account of Deogratias, a man who has fled from the genocide and civil war in Burundi (just south of the equator in East Central Africa, bordering Rwanda). He escapes to New York, out of fear and want of a safer life; only his new found American life isn't quite what it promised.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>186197857X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Catrine Clay
|title=Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary='You have to learn to be hard men, to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'. Such did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies in the 1930s. He probably did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with a broken neck, such is the lifetime of difference between the two references. But that lifetime, as packed and varied as it was, is in the pages of this ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082884</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angela Thirlwell
|title=Into The Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Ford Madox Brown, born in 1821 in Calais of a Scottish family, raised in France and Belgium before settling in England, was one of the foremost Victorian artists. Throughout his career he was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and shared many of their same ideals, style and subject matter, though he never officially became a member of the group.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701179023</amazonuk>
}}