132,610
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]]__NOTOC__ ==Autobiography=={{newreview|author=Sian Williams|title=Struggle or Starve|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Struggle or Starve is a collection of autobiographical writings about girls' and women's lives in South Wales between the wars. This is a new edition of a book first published in 1998 by Honno, an independent publisher set up to encourage Welsh women writers. Most of the contributors in this book came from miners' families and grew up in real poverty and economic insecurity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906784094</amazonuk!-- Remove -->}} {{newreview|author=Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit |title=Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad: The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=In early 2005, a BBC journalist emails an Iraqi woman to confirm and prepare for a telephone interview about day to day life in Baghdad, and about her thoughts on the forthcoming elections there. May's detailed and frank responses prompt more curiosity and questions from Bee, and a friendship develops between the two women. They tell each other about their work, relationships and family lives.|amazonuk= <amazonuk!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->0141038535</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chinua Achebe0241636604|title=The Education of a British-Protected Child|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=This book is a collection of autobiographical essays by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, whose best known work is the novel Things Fall Apart, published in 1958. Topics covered include Nigerian, Biafran and Igbo history and culture, African literature and the legacy of colonialism in his country and the rest of Africa. Some of the essays are taken from guest lectures at universities around the world and conference papers, and others are written for this book, particularly many of the more personal pieces about Achebe's family.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142598</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gabriel Weston|title=Direct Red|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Few people have the ability to convey the minutiae of their profession in ways which engage the reader, answer your unspoken questions and talk in such a way that you're neither patronised nor overburdened with jargon. Gabriel Weston is one such – and ''Direct Red'' held me as though I was hypnotised for several hours. She's a surgeon and we're pulled into the intricacies of her world without the need to don mask and gown.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520699</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dana Fowley|title=How Could She?|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=From the age of five Dana Fowley was subjected to unimaginable sexual abuse and before long her sister would be subjected to more of the same. She was raped by her mother's partner and taken to the homes of her grandparents where she was abused by them and others. At other times she was forced to go to the homes of other men where she was raped and abused. Did her mother not know what was going on? Did she turn a blind eye? It was neither of those. Her mother was a willing participant in the abuse and organised much of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952225X</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewTrading Game: A Confession|author=Val Doonican|title=My Story, My Life: Val Doonican - The Complete AutobiographyGary 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>
}}
{{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>
}}
{{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
}}
{{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>
}}
|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
}}
{{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
}}
{{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>}}
}}
{{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
}}
{{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>
}}
{{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 doesnhis memoir? Do you know, I really don't sound impressive enough, then just consider that Jack Garcia was a Cuban-born American and he went undercover as an Italian amongst Italiansthink I can.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847393942</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{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
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Vicky Jaggers0571365884|title=SilencedMy Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia Pritchett|rating=3.54
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Vicky Jaggers had Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as a dreadful childhoodchild. One sister She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it 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 the sort of work his abilities life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were directed towards getting what he wanted without making any effortfew and far between. The family moved house regularly On a visit to a therapist, as Vicky's father looked for work and schooling soon became an option which wasn't always chosen. adult, Sexually mature at the age of nine and looking much older than her years when she took was completely unable to spending much of speak about what was wrong with her time in the pubs her parents ran and it was whilst her parents were serving in the bar suggested that David raped her – on three successive nights – when she was only twelve. Her pregnancy wasnshould write it down and ''My Mess is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety''t evident for six monthsis the result - or so we are given to believe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340976772</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth Merry and Steve Emecz Daniel Gibbs with Teresa H Barker|title=Enabled: One Disabled Woman's Incredible Story of Tackling Her Disability in Pursuit of a Lifelong DreamA Tattoo on my Brain
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Ruth Merry has never been Alzheimer's is a disease that slowly wears away your common-or-garden young ladyidentity and sense of self. Born with no ability to move her legsI have been directly affected by this cruel disease, as have many. Your memories and more, due to personality worn away like a condition called arthrogryposis, she still became an avid equestrian, downhill skier, competitive swimmer, fund-raiser statue over time affected the elements. It seems as if nature wants that final victory over you and moreyour dignity. This is what makes Daniel Gibbs' memoir so admirable. At the beginning of this book Daniel Gibbs is a flippant comment inspires another, future dream - that of going down neurologist who was diagnosed with Alzheimers and has documented his journey in a four-man bobsleigh''A Tattoo on my Brain''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904312322</amazonuk>1108838936
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529109116
|title=Call Me Red: A Shepherd's Journey
|author=Hannah Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=''I want the image of a British farmer to simply be that of a person who is proudly employed in feeding the nation. I don't think that is too much to ask.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lynn Barber 0008333173|title=An EducationHungry: A Memoir of Wanting More|author=Grace Dent
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Lynn Barber comes from I'm always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the judges on ''lower, unremembered, orders on both sidesMasterchef''. There is no ancestral home or village – just parents who were determined You know that she should work hard and make something you're going to get an honest opinion from someone whom you sense does real food rather than fine dining most of herselfthe time. Well, they were – until Simon proposed and it was explained to her that Oxford didn't really matter, You also ponder on how she can look so elegant with all that being married to a good man would be more important. Simon was much older – older food in fact than he would admit to – and he picked Lynn up (quite literally) at a bus stop when she was just sixteenfront of her. Surprisingly her parents were unworried by this and threw them together, despite I've often wondered about the fact that Simon, who was in woman behind the property business, had some strange friends. In the nineteen fifties it wasnmedia image and ''Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More''t every sixteen year old girl who had is a passing acquaintance with the evil slum landlord, Peter Rachmanstunning read which will make you laugh and break your heart in equal measures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039558</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1504321383
|title=Single, Again, and Again, and Again
|author=Louisa Pateman
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''You can't be happy and fulfilled on your own. You are not complete until you find a man''.
This was what Louisa Pateman was brought up to believe. It wasn't unkind: it was simply the adults in her life advising her as to what they thought would be best for her. It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she's usually fairly young) is rescued by the handsome prince who then marries her so that they can live happily ever after. Few girls are lucky enough to be brought up ''without'' the expectation that they will marry and have children. It was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ''a belief is a choice''.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stan Cattermole Sakinu Ahronglong|title=Bete de JourHunter School
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''SomethingThe flyleaf to this little collection tells us that it is a work of fiction. That's just come possibly misleading. I am not sure whether it is "fiction" in the sense that might appeal Ahronglong made it all up, or whether it is as the blurb goes on to yousay ''recollections, said Sue from The Bookbag, having just taken delivery of ''Bête de Jourfolklore and autobiographical stories''. Pleased to be thought of, I never mustered It feels like the latter. It feels like the courage to ask whether this thought was motivated by stories he tells about his experiences as a previous liking for bloke litchild, as an adolescent, or by the book's subtitle: ''The Intimate Adventures of as an Ugly Man''adult are real and true. But memory is a fickle thing, and maybe poetic licence has taken over here and there and maybe calling it fiction means that its safer and therefore more people will read it. More people should.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007312741</amazonuk>1999791282
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Queenan1544641923|title=Closing TimeAmbassadors Do It After Dinner|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=3.54
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Joe Queenan made good despite a deprived It's tempting to think that the diplomatic life is privileged and neglected childhoodluxurious. His world was a It might be privileged, but family connections tell me that it is far cry from the middle class background of most aspiring writers of his generationluxurious. He grew up in Philadelphia, born Now you're not going to get many ambassadors telling you what it's really like (it's not ''diplomatic'' to parents do so immersed in their own problems , you know), but the diplomatic spouse, the accompanying baggage, well, that they made little attempt to love or care for their four children's an entirely different matter. Practically the only way his father provided She (and it still usually is a 'she') can tell us exactly what goes on.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241446732|title=Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a role model Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was in his love an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of readingtheir two daughters. OtherwiseThen eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, he then nine years old, struggled with what was an alcoholichappening. In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, frequently beating his young childrenit became clear to the family that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330458272</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Carr191280493X|title=The Night Coming of the GunAge|author=Danny Ryan|rating=3.54|genre=Autobiography |summary=When you decide ''He began writing novels and poetry at the age of twelve, but it was to take drugs him a further forty-eight years to realise that he wasn’t very good at either. Consistently unpublished for the first all that time, according to most, it's rarely he remains a class 'Ashining example of hope over experience...' 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847396283</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Coleen Nolan190874572X|title=Upfront and Personal: The AutobiographyLetters from Tove|author=Tove Jansson (Author), Boel Westin (Editor), Helen Svensson (Editor), Sarah Death (Translator)
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=As a childBack at the beginning of the century, I was went on holiday to Nepal. I met a huge fan wonderful Finnish woman and we became sort-of the Nolan Sisters-friends. When ''Ican'm in the Mood for Dancing'' hit the charts in 1979, t remember if it was on that holiday or a later one that Paula told me I was ten years oldreally had to read Tove Jansson. Bernie I do know that it was my favourite Nolan at the time and in recent four yearslater that I finally acquired an English translation of The Summer Book, and that I have enjoyed watching her acting in shows like eagerly awaited the ''The BillSort Of''translations of the rest of Jansson's work and devoured them as soon as I could get my hands on them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0283070889</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rick Wakeman1908745819|title=Grumpy Old Rock StarSurfacing |author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Rick Wakeman wrote and published Sometimes when people suggest that you read a more conventional autobiographycertain book, they tell you ''Say Yes!this one has your name on it'' in 1985. Mostly we take them at their word, and or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so, unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it has so far never been updatedwrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. ThisAdd to that my love of the natural world, written with of those aspects of the aid poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of ghost-writer Martin Roachall, takes a totally different approachabout connection. Of course, being a selection of episodes from his sixty years in more or less random orderthis book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. In theory I am pleased to have it might seem rather disjointed, but in practice it works brilliantlyfall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090056</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Belle de Jour1906852472|title=The Intimate Adventures of Wild Child: Growing Up a London Call GirlNomad|author=Ian Mathie|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Following For Ian Mathie fans there is good and bad news. Ian has come up with the missing link in his narrative, the story of a very unusual childhood (yes, the very years that made him the recent success with ITV2amazing man he became). The bad – well it's highly-publicised TV version of Belle de Jourhardly news two years later – is that the book is published posthumously. As always, it's online blogbeautifully written, starring Billie Piper, it comes as no surprise with many exciting moments. What I most enjoyed was the feeling that sales for her 2005 book, many of the questions in Ian Mathie's later books are answered in ''The Intimate Adventures of a London Call GirlWild Child'', sky-rocketedwith a satisfying clunk. After Seemingly all, who doesnthat't want to hear all the profound details of working s now left in the London sex trade?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753819236</amazonuk>drawer is unpublishable.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emma Charles1999811402|title=How Could He Do It?Painting Snails|author=Stephen John Hartley
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Emma Charles was It's very difficult to classify ''Painting Snails'': originally I thought that as it's loosely based around a year on the edge of thinking that she and her family were doing quite well. They were an ordinary family – mumallotment it would be a lifestyle book, dad, two daughters, three dogs, a rabbit but you're not going to get advice on what to plant when and a couple of guinea pigswhere for the best results. Sprinkle in an Open University course for Mum, private schooling for The answer would be something along the girls, a nice car in the drive lines of the nice house, good clothes 'try it and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with the way that life was goingsee'. Then her fifteen year old daughterI considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, Tamsindid an engineering apprenticeship, gave her became 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 certaintiesbusker, the hopes finally got into medical school and the expectationsis now an A&E consultant (part-time). In came the police, Social Services and Child Protection Officers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090005</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jacqueline Walker|title=Pilgrim State|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I was intrigued and touched by Jacqueline Walkerfound out that there's beautiful memoir of her childhood an awful lot more to what goes on in Jamaica and London in the 1960a Major Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from 's. This is a book inevitably compared with Andrea Levy's Casualty''Small Island, but that isn't really what the book's about. It follows similar groundThere's a lot about rock & roll, but which seems to be the main difference and great strengthreal passion of Hartley's life, is that but itdidn's t actually fit into the real narrative of mother and daughterentertainment genre either. As Did we have a girl I was familiar with areas of London where Jackie Walker lived and heard some members of my family denigrate Caribbean immigrantscategory for 'doing the impossible the hard way'? Yep - that's the one. From this memoir, IIt've garnered much about the lived experience of my less advantaged contemporariess an autobiography.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340960809</amazonuk>
}}