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[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> ==Autobiography== <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Val Doonican0241636604|title=My Story, My LifeThe Trading Game: Val Doonican - The Complete AutobiographyA Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=In the 1960sIf you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, if Harold Wilson was the personification you're unlikely to think of politics someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the Beatles pin-stripe suit and his background is the collective icon of youth cultureEast End, Val Doonican where he was similarly at the very apex of light entertainmentfamiliar with violence, poverty and injustice. He may There was no longer have such a high profile – posh public school on his CV - but he's outlasted them bothhad been to the London School of Economics. Over four decades he has refused to bow to passing fads and fashions, remained true to himself, Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and in the process he has never really put a foot wrongfacility with numbers which most of us can only envy. As he says towards the end, 'When you find out He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what it is you do bestwas, and what the public wants from youessentially, then stick a card game which got him an internship with it, and do it as well as you canCitibank.' With the possible exception of his contemporary and long-time professional and personal friend Rolf HarrisEventually, it's difficult to think of another person in showbiz who comes across this turned into permanent employment as more genuinely likeable, and more a genuine case of 'what you see is what you get'trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906779619</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aeronwy Thomas 1529395224|title=My Father's PlacesLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: A portrait The Secret Life of childhood by Dylan Thomas' daughtera Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Aeronwy Thomas Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was six years old when she a GP and her family came Rowlands didn't want to settle after a nomadic existence at Laugharnefollow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on -call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this was the Welsh coast, in 1949job for him. Dylan used to broadcast regularly on the BBCBefore long, and while he continued to travel to London regularly for the purpose (was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as well as to carouse with friends in so many students - been his old haunts)dream since he was a child. If anything, somewhere off the beaten track was he'd wanted to be a more suitable working environmentprofessional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849010056</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael PalinEdel Rodriguez|title=Diaries 1969-1979Worm: The Python YearsA Cuban American Odyssey
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyGraphic Novels|summary=We're in childhood, and we'Never meet your heroesre in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro,'' goes first thought of as a saviour of the old adagecountry, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. ''Never read their diaries'' might be equally sage advice Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. That Our narrator's probably why I didnfamily weren't tackle Michael Palin's collected daily journals until now. Along with in the rest happiest of places here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the Monty Python team, country demanded (especially as he was without doubt a hero of my teenage years.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075382177X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Shirley Williams|title=Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography of Shirley Williams|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Who could resist a title like that? And is this would probably be shipped off to some lesserminor pro-known Shirley WilliamsCommunism skirmish, recalling a life spent in libraries? such as Angola) and the father being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. The answer mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the latter is no. Shirley Catlin, as she was bornheat, tells us but in the early pages of this memoir that during her childhood her father encouraged her to climb the bookshelves in their Chelsea housesultry island country, right up to the ceiling. It was a secret between it remains the two kind of them, as her mother, Testament heat forcing you out of Youth Author Vera Brittain, would have immediately anticipated cracked skulls and broken arms.the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844084760</amazonuk>1474616720
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jose Saramago 1035025299|title=Small MemoriesWent to London, Took the Dog|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Having Nina Stibbe is returning to London for a sabbatical after being away for twenty years. She's been born in 1922 and lived through so much of the twentieth century, with an authorat Victoria's view of change and people, Jose Saramago has certainly experienced a lot. Civil Wars smallholding in the neighbouring Spain; the growth of his country - Leicestershire which still left it isn't all that conducive to writing, as western Europethere's poorestalways something smallholding happening - as you might expect. Here he allows us witness to his mind drifting through his childhood, in The other side of the country and in Lisbon, and provides decision was sealed when a room became available (courtesy of Deborah Moggach) at a subtle and gentle memoirvery reasonable rent.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655148X</amazonuk>
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|genre=Autobiography
|summary=It is almost 40 years since Dr Hunter S Thompson's seminal work ''Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas'' the first graced of August in the shelvesmiddle of a cool wet summer in East Anglia. His gonzo style, putting himself I decided not to swim at the centre pool in favour of going to my beach hut. The weather closed in, rain arrived, and I decided not to do that either. When I finished reading this book, I realised it was because (a) I wanted to finish reading this book and (b) I did not want to do so anywhere near my shack. No spoiler alerts, the story, should tell readers as much dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler 'was' – and his first chapter tells us about the person doing the writing as the event he is describinghis terminal diagnosis. If that's the case then what There is something very strange about being made to be learned from laugh by a selection of interviews with the main man himself then? The answer who repeatedly reminds you that he is dying, and you know he actually is plentyat that point, because he does. He did.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330510711</amazonuk>0857529625
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Keith FloydKit De Waal|title=Stirred But Not Shaken: The AutobiographyWithout Warning and Only Sometimes|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=I grew As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you up with television cookery programmes , your mum and still have some recipes in my childish handwritingdad/ They may not mean to, which begin ''4oz SR fl 2oz marg 2oz C sug…'' as I battled to copy what was but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the screen before we retuned to bonds that bind family. This book is a memoir focussing on the presenterauthor’s formative years as a teenager living in a lower class area of Birmingham. Her father is from St. Programmes stagnated as Kitts in the cook spoke to camera Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for becoming pregnant by and lectured the viewer on how to make sponge cake or marrying a fish dish. Then we were shocked awakeblack man. There was This intersectionality plays a man, quite good-looking large role in a raffish, slightly dangerous sort of way, who cooked on the deck of a trawler or wherever the whim took himautobiography. Kit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her race, always glass in hand her class and who was quite capable of berating the cameraman about how he was doing his jobher gender. Like himHer parents loom large and are written with care, or hate him – you could not help but know that he was Keith Floydlove, or Floydy and the kind of anger only a child can express to millionstheir parents.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0283071052</amazonuk>1472284852
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Brian Johnson 1638485216|title=Rockers Black, White, and RollersGray All Over: An Automotive Autobiography A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement|author=Frederick Reynolds|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Brian Johnson will probably go down as one of the luckiest men in showbiz''Corruption is not department, gender or race specific. He had a brief moment of glory in the early 70s as vocalist It has everything to do with Geordie, a Tyneside version of Slade, who had three Top 40 hits and then fell on hard timescharacter. 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 diedPeriod. 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718155424</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan BennettBjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri and Agnes Bromme (Translator)|title=A Life Like Other People'sI May Be Wrong
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography|summary=It was When the Dalai Lama adds his motherwords to your frontispiece, I's illness which triggered Alan Bennettm inclined to think it doesn's excursions into his family background. The bout t really matter how the rest of depression hadn't cleared as the family had hoped and admission world responds to hospital was the next step in the treatmentyour book. Asked if there had been anything like this beforeI know, Bennett said nothaving read the book in question, failing to notice his father's hand gently touch his kneethat Lindeblad would disagree with that thought. The son was educated He knows (and at Oxford and had even been seen on core so do I) that it matters very much how the television. He did rest of the talking rather than world responds to this book, because it tells the fathertruth as it is, reluctant butcher and a man not given to putting himself forwardin the early 21st century.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571248128</amazonuk>1526644827
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elliott J Gorn gareth_steel|title=Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number OneNever Work With Animals|author=Gareth Steel
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryAnimals and Wildlife|summary=John Dillinger was born and brought up in Indiana. His childhood was no better and no worse than most I don't often begin my reviews with a warning but the early part of his adult life was with ''Never Work With Animals'' it seems to be blighted by a spell in prison when he was convicted appropriate. Stories of an attack on a man in a botched hold-upvet's life have proved popular since ''All Creatures Great and Small'' but ''Never Work With Animals'' is definitely not the companion volume you've been looking for. Hoping for leniency he pleaded guilty but was sentenced to As a lengthy term of imprisonmentTV show the author would argue that ''All Creatures'' lacked realism, whilst as do other similar programmes. Gareth Steel says that the man book is not suitable for younger readers and - after reading - I agree with him pleaded not guilty and when convicted received a shorter sentence. ItHe says that he's easy written it to see where Dillingerinform and provoke thought, particularly amongst aspiring vets. It deals with some uncomfortable and distressing issues but it doesn's contempt for the law was spawnedt lack sensitivity, although there are occasions when you would be best choosing between reading and eating.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0195304837</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia Dave Letterfly Knoderer|title=Making Jack FalconeSpeedy: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia FamilyHurled Through Havoc
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia worked for How to summarise the FBI. That might sound rather glamorous but Jack had a special claim to fame. He was one life of those rare people who always worked undercover – not just for hours or days at Dave Letterfly Knodererv in a time but sometimes for years. In ''Making Jack Falcone'' he tells the story of how he came pithy sentence to infiltrate the Mafia in New York and was responsible for kick off a string review of arrests which crippled the organised crime families. If that doesn't sound impressive enoughhis memoir? Do you know, then just consider that Jack Garcia was a Cuban-born American and he went undercover as an Italian amongst Italians.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847393942</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lucy Mangan |title=My Family and Other Disasters|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Not living in the UK means that we I really 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 think I began the book - a collection of her Guardian columns - without any preconceptionscan.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0852651244</amazonuk>}}
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008350388
|title=We Need to Talk About Money
|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Wadham 0571365884|title=The Secret My Mess is a Bit of Life of France: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia Pritchett
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Lynn Barber comes from the ''lowerGeorgia Pritchett has always been anxious, unremembered, orders on both sides''even as a child. There is no ancestral home or village – just parents who were determined that she should work hard and make something of herself. Well, they She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were – until Simon proposed and comfortable: it was explained the sort of life where if she had nothing to her that Oxford didn't really matter, that being married to a good man worry about she would be more importantbecome anxious but such occasions were few and far between. Simon was much older – older in fact than he would admit On a visit to – and he picked Lynn up (quite literally) at a bus stop therapist, as an adult, when she was just sixteen. Surprisingly completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her parents were unworried by this and threw them together, despite the fact it was suggested that Simon, who was in the property business, had some strange friends. In the nineteen fifties she should write it wasndown and 't every sixteen year old girl who had 'My Mess is a Bit of a passing acquaintance with Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the evil slum landlord, Peter Rachmanresult - or so we are given to believe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039558</amazonuk>
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|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Joe Queenan made good despite Alzheimer's is a deprived disease that slowly wears away your identity and neglected childhoodsense of self. I have been directly affected by this cruel disease, as have many. His world was Your memories and personality worn away like a far cry from statue over time affected the middle class background of most aspiring writers of his generationelements. It seems as if nature wants that final victory over you and your dignity. He grew up in Philadelphia, born to parents This is what makes Daniel Gibbs' memoir so immersed in their own problems that they made little attempt to love or care for their four childrenadmirable. Practically the only way his father provided Daniel Gibbs is a role model neurologist who was diagnosed with Alzheimers and has documented his journey in his love of reading. Otherwise, he was an alcoholic, frequently beating his young children.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330458272</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Carr|title=The Night of the Gun|rating=3.5|genre=Autobiography |summary=When you decide to take drugs for the first time, according to most, it's rarely a class 'ATattoo on my Brain' 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847396283</amazonuk>1108838936
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cylin Busby and John Busby1529109116|title=The Year We DisappearedCall Me Red: A Father-Daughter MemoirShepherd's Journey|author=Hannah Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Business and Finance Lifestyle|summary=''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 - want the lower half image of his jaw'' ''was removed when he was shot a British farmer to simply be that of a person who is proudly employed in feeding the head with a shotgunnation. His tongue was torn in half, his teeth and gums blown'' ' I don'away, leaving a bit of bone t think that was once his chin connected with dangling flesh at the front of his faceis too much to ask.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408802015</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Coleen Nolan0008333173|title=Upfront and PersonalHungry: The AutobiographyA Memoir of Wanting More|author=Grace Dent
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=As a child, I was a huge fan 'm always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the Nolan Sisters. When judges on ''IMasterchef'm in the Mood for Dancing'. You know that you' hit re going to get an honest opinion from someone whom you sense does real food rather than fine dining most of the charts time. You also ponder on how she can look so elegant with all that good food in 1979, front of her. I was ten years old. Bernie was my favourite Nolan at 've often wondered about the woman behind the time media image and in recent years, I have enjoyed watching her acting in shows like ''The BillHungry: A Memoir of Wanting More''is a stunning read which will make you laugh and break your heart in equal measures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0283070889</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rick Wakeman1504321383|title=Grumpy Old Rock StarSingle, Again, and Again, and Again|author=Louisa Pateman
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Rick Wakeman wrote and published a more conventional autobiography, ''Say Yes!'You can' in 1985, t be happy and it has so far never been updatedfulfilled on your own. This, written with the aid of ghost-writer Martin Roach, takes You are not complete until you find 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 brilliantlyman''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090056</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma CharlesSakinu Ahronglong|title=How Could He Do It?Hunter School
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Emma Charles was on the edge of thinking The flyleaf to this little collection tells us that she and her family were doing quite well. They were an ordinary family – mum, dad, two daughters, three dogs, it is a rabbit and a couple work of guinea pigsfiction. That's possibly misleading. Sprinkle I am not sure whether it is "fiction" in an Open University course for Mum, private schooling for the girlssense that Ahronglong made it all up, a nice car in or whether it is as the drive of the nice houseblurb goes on to say ''recollections, good clothes folklore and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with autobiographical stories''. It feels like the way that life was goinglatter. Then her fifteen year old daughter, Tamsin, gave her It feels like the stories he tells about his experiences as a notechild, couched in graphic termsas an adolescent, saying that her father had been sexually abusing her for the past five years.In moments the family's life fell apartas an adult are real and true. Gone were all the certaintiesBut memory is a fickle thing, the hopes and the expectationsmaybe poetic licence has taken over here and there and maybe calling it fiction means that its safer and therefore more people will read it. In came the police, Social Services and Child Protection OfficersMore people should.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848090005</amazonuk>1999791282
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jacqueline Walker1544641923|title=Pilgrim StateAmbassadors Do It After Dinner|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=54
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I was intrigued and touched by Jacqueline WalkerIt's beautiful memoir of her childhood in Jamaica tempting to think that the diplomatic life is privileged and London in the 1960'sluxurious. This It might be privileged, but family connections tell me that it is a book inevitably compared with Andrea Levyfar from luxurious. Now you're not going to get many ambassadors telling you what it's really like (it's not ''Small Islanddiplomatic''. It follows similar groundto do so, you know), but the main difference and great strengthdiplomatic spouse, the accompanying baggage, well, is that it's the real narrative of mother and daughteran entirely different matter. As She (and it still usually is 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 contemporariesshe') can tell us exactly what goes on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340960809</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alice Taylor0241446732|title=The ParishOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=45|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Ours are hard times for humanity - for a number The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of reasonstheir two daughters. Firstly Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, we don't talk to each other muchBeata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. Second In such circumstances, 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 natural to seek a neighbours' door asking for a cup of sugar. Maybe that's just mesolution close to home, but look around you - pregnant women struggle eventually, it became clear to get a seat on the train, 12family that they were ''burned-year olds get accidentally shot in out people on a supermarket lane, and itburned-out planet''s . acceptable If they were to throw find a tantrum over wrong hair colourway to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863223974</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Worth191280493X|title=Farewell To The East EndComing of Age|author=Danny Ryan
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I am interested in social history ''He began writing novels and, as a mother, poetry at the job age of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjectstwelve, ''Farewell but it was to the East End'' is take him a riveting readfurther forty-eight years to realise that he wasn’t very good at either. The author Jennifer Worth was Consistently unpublished for all that time, he remains a midwife and nurse, working with the nuns at Nonnatus House in the East End shining example of London and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950shope over experience...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297844652</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rania Al-Baz190874572X|title=Disfigured: A Saudi Woman's Story of Triumph over ViolenceLetters from Tove|author=Tove Jansson (Author), Boel Westin (Editor), Helen Svensson (Editor), Sarah Death (Translator)|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Throughout her life Rania Al-Baz has been an unusual woman. She was married off by her father when she was still Back at school to a man she hardly knew and was the only married pupilbeginning of the century, 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 I went on her schooling but the marriage failed and Rania returned holiday to her fatherNepal. It might have been expected that she would fade quietly into the home, but in I met a most unusual step she wonderful Finnish woman and we became the smiling face sort-of-friends. I can't remember if it was on that holiday or a Saudi television programmelater one that Paula told me I really had to read Tove Jansson. No woman had ever been a news anchor before and I do know that it was only to be expected four years later that I finally acquired an English translation of The Summer Book, and that there would be plenty I eagerly awaited the ''Sort Of'' translations of the rest of men wanting to marry herJansson's work and devoured them as soon as I could get my hands on them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844370755</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Fiennes1908745819|title=The Music RoomSurfacing |author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=William Fiennes grows up in Sometimes when people suggest that you read a castle (Broughton Castlecertain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, in fact - but rarely do we ask them why they thought so, unless it turns out that wedidn're not told directly which one)t like the book. It sounds That's a dream upbringing - rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a large librarybook calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, chances I was told why. The blurb speaks of ice-skating round the moatauthor considering ''an older, film crews dropping in less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to record TV that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and heritage cinemalyrical that are about style not form, a host and substance most of culture and nature at handall, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. But like so many castles of fiction there is a bogeyman hampering out and out joyIt was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. In this case I am pleased to have it is William's oldest brother, Richardfall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330444409</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Pritchard1906852472|title=Shooting the CookWild Child: Growing Up a Nomad|author=Ian Mathie|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=David Pritchard would have you believe that he was a bumbling TV producer For Ian Mathie fans there is good and that he, almost by accident, discovered two men who would go on to become celebrity chefsbad news. The firstIan has come up with the missing link in his narrative, Keith Floyd, was the story of a revelation to viewers as he slurped a glass very unusual childhood (or two) of wineyes, said exactly what you thought he shouldn't have said and cooked amazing food in one exotic location after another. After the stultifying programmes very years that made by him the likes Fanny Craddock amazing man he was a breath of fresh air and like or loathe him there was no way became). The bad – well it's hardly news two years later – is that you could be ambivalentthe book is published posthumously. The second manAs always, Rick Stein, was an entirely different, erit's beautifully written, kettle of fishwith many exciting moments. Quiet, thoughtful and decidedly more erudite – it What I most enjoyed was difficult to imagine two more diverse personalities, but he brought out the best feeling that many of both and made programmes which stay the questions in Ian Mathie's later books are answered in ''Wild Child'' with a satisfying clunk. Seemingly all that's now left in the mind years laterdrawer is unpublishable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007278306</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emmanuel Jal1999811402|title=War Child: A Boy Soldier's StoryPainting Snails|author=Stephen John Hartley
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Emmanuel Jal, internationally successful rap artist, spent his childhood It's very difficult to classify ''Painting Snails'': originally I thought that as it's loosely based around a solider in his native Sudan. He has written his story in order to help those children who are still fightingyear on an allotment it would be a lifestyle book, and those who have managed but you're not going to get awayadvice on what to plant when and where for the best results. There are a number The answer would be something along the lines of books about the Sudan by western aid workers 'try it and journalistssee'. Then I considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, who dodid an engineering apprenticeship, I am surebecame a busker, write fluently finally got into medical school and passionately about the horror of Darfuris now an A&E consultant (part-time). This is I found out that there's an awful lot more to what goes on in a Major Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from ''Casualty'', but that isn't really what the first book that I have read 's about. There's a lot about rock & roll, which tells seems to be the story real passion of war from Hartley's life, but it didn't actually fit into the point of view of entertainment genre either. Did we have a small boy carrying category for 'doing the impossible the hard way'? Yep - that's the one. It's an AK-47, a gun taller than he is himselfautobiography.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700050</amazonuk>
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