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[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth Swados0241636604|title=My Depression The Trading Game: A Picture BookConfession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If you have ever suffered from depression you'll find it very difficult were to explain to other people how bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're feelingunlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. You're not feeling ''just a little bit down''A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. A treat or a dollop There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of positive thinking will not miraculously cure youEconomics. You're definitely not swinging the lead, but suffering from Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a legitimate illness facility with numbers which deserves most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be recognisedstupid. Elizabeth Swados is It was his ability at what was, essentially, a long-term sufferer from severe depression: she's also a talented storyteller and has told her the story of how depression feels for her - complete card game which got him an internship with drawingsCitibank. Eventually, which fill in those gaps which words can never fill for any sufferer from depressionthis turned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1609806042</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Red Szell1529395224|title=Letting the Cat Out of the Bag: The Blind Man Secret Life of Hoy: A True Storya Vet|author=Sion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Redmond Széll Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) at age 19. Ita GP and Rowlands didn's now 26 years since t want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he got considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life-changing news. Although not completely sightless – When he sees shadows and shapes – was seventeen he is registered blind took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and walks with was convinced this was the stereotypical white stickjob for him. Before long, he was at Liverpool University. This hasn It hadn't stopped him from pursuing - as with so many students - been his hobby of rock-climbing, though, both indoors on climbing walls and on Britain's cliffsdream since he was a child. The culmination of his climbing obsession came in 2013 If anything, when he became the first blind person 'd wanted to climb the Old Man of Hoy, the 449-foot cliff off the Orkney Islands of Scotlandbe a professional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910124222</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Vesna GoldsworthyEdel Rodriguez|title=Chernobyl StrawberriesWorm: A Cuban American Odyssey
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyGraphic Novels|summary=A book about We're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a woman from a war-shredded saviour of the country, who discovers she has breast cancer…Not proven himself a bundle of laughsCommunist, one would assumeand not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. One would be wrong Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narrator's family weren'Chernobyl Strawberries'' ist in the happiest of places here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and the father being watched and watched, amongst other thingsand not liked for his successful photography business, very funnysuccess being frowned upon. The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908524472</amazonuk>1474616720
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Kemp1035025299|title=Caring for ShirleyWent to London, Took the Dog|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=John Kemp's wife, Shirley, suffered from dementia and loss of coordination and Nina Stibbe is returning to London for a sabbatical after being away for eight twenty years he was her full-time carer as she was unable to walk unaided (well, she . She's been at Victoria'coulds smallholding in Leicestershire which isn'' - but it was likely to result in a serious fall) and took care of t all her most personal needs. Probably the most heart-breaking part of this is that Shirley didn't recognise John conducive to writing, as her husband - apart from 'give us a kiss', the question 'wherethere's John?' was usually the first which sprang to her lips in any situationalways something smallholding happening - as you might expect. Although she could often have quite an affable disposition she The other side of the decision was capable sealed when a room became available (courtesy of kicking and biting when she was being 'encouraged' to do something which she didn't want to doDeborah Moggach) at a very reasonable rent.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1479374245</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael PronkoChristopher Fowler|title=Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=Adapting a Buddhist metaphor, Michael Pronko declares that 'writing about [Tokyo] is like catching fish with a hollow gourd.' In other words, it is an elusive and contradictory place that resists easy conclusions. Anyone who has seen the Bill Murray film ''Lost in Translation'' will retain the sense of a glittering, bewildering place that Westerners wander through in a daze. A long-term resident but still a perpetual outsider, Pronko is perfectly placed to notice the many odd and wonderful aspects of Tokyo life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00PDH4KVA</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Derek Niemann|title=A Nazi in the Family: The Hidden Story of an SS Family in Wartime GermanyWord Monkey
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=I'm sure someone somewhere has rewritten The DevilIt's Dictionary to include the following – ''family: noun; place where first of August in the greatest secrets are kept''middle of a cool wet summer in East Anglia. The Niemann family is no exceptionI decided not to swim at the pool in favour of going to my beach hut. It was long known that grandfather Karl was The weather closed in Germany during the Second World War, people could easily work rain arrived, and I decided not to do that out from the family biography. Yet little was spoken of, apart from him being an office-bound worker, either in logistics or finance. Since the War two of three surviving siblings had relocated to the Glasgow environsWhen I finished reading this book, and there I realised it was even because (a family quip concerning Goebbels ) I wanted to finish reading this book and Gorbals (''family: noun; place where the worst things are spoken in the best way''b)I did not want to do so anywhere near my shack. What was a surprise to our authorNo spoiler alerts, and many of his relatives, was that things were a lot closer to the former than had been expected, for Karl dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler 'was such an office worker ' – for the SSand his first chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosis. With There is something very strange about being made to laugh by a lot of family history finally out of the closet of silent mouthsman who repeatedly reminds you that he is dying, and with incriminating photographic evidence revealed in unlikely waysyou know he actually is at that point, the whole truth can be knownbecause he does. But this is certainly not just of interest to that one small familyHe did.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780722222</amazonuk>0857529625
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Erwin Mortier and Paul Vincent (translator)Kit De Waal|title=Stammered Songbook: A Mother's Book of HoursWithout Warning and Only Sometimes|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=A chateau in As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the countrybonds that bind family. So far, This book is a fine life behind you. Just 65 memoir focussing on the author’s formative years as a teenager living in a lower class area of ageBirmingham. Her father is from St. A happy collection of three successful childrenKitts in the Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for becoming pregnant by and marrying a black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in the autobiography. Alzheimer'sKit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her race, her class and her gender. You work out what's Her parents loom large and are written with care, love, and the one bummer in that circumstancekind of anger only a child can express to their parents.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782270213</amazonuk>1472284852
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lena Mukhina and Amanda Love Darragh (translator)1638485216|title=The Diary of Lena MukhinaBlack, White, and Gray All Over: A GirlBlack Man's Odyssey in Life in the Siege of Leningradand Law Enforcement|author=Frederick Reynolds|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If life as a girl of school-leaving age ''Corruption is hard enoughnot department, think about it when you're stuck in a great city under a horrendous siegegender or race specific. Lena MukhinaIt has everything to do with character. Period.'' ''One more body just wouldn't matter's diary only covers half the 800'. The murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-odd days the nightmare in Leningrad lastedold black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, but so palpably singular were the circumstances that it feels like one is given the clearest insight into what it was likea forty-four-year-old police officer, courtesy of these pages. I've been there and never felt in the ghost US city of Minneapolis sent shock waves around the siege in the modern St Petersburg, anything like (for example) the ruination of Warsaw had lived onworld. But We rarely see pictures of a dreadful time this murder taking place but Floyd's death wasan exception. At the peak times The image of Nazi oppression and aerial bombing, the city lost 2 or 3 residentsChauvin kneeling on George' lives s neck is not one which I''every minute'' of ll ever forget and the day on averageprotests which followed cannot have been unexpected. The city There was desperate for fuel, and food – and this is a place where it can – backlash against the police - and does here – snow not just in June. Without giving too much of Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were ''all'' tarred by the diet away, it's notable that later on Lena dreams of having a menagerie of small animals to live with – but no dogs or catsChauvin brush.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144726987X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margery Kempe Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri and Anthony Bale Agnes Bromme (editorTranslator)|title=The Book of Margery KempeI May Be Wrong|rating=3.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Born around 1373When the Dalai Lama adds his words to your frontispiece, I'm inclined to think it doesn't really matter how the rest of the world responds to your book. I know, Margery Kempe grew up having read the book in a family of good standing - her Father serving as a mayorquestion, that Lindeblad would disagree with that thought. He knows (and as a member at core so do I) that it matters very much how the rest of parliament. Whilst no records remain of her childhoodthe world responds to this book, because it tells the truth as it is unlikely that Margery would have received any kind of formal education. She was, however, taught religious texts, which may well have set in the way for the visions she would encounter later in lifeearly 21st century.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0199686645</amazonuk>1526644827
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Esterlygareth_steel|title=The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of MakingNever Work With Animals|author=Gareth Steel
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Bouncing between his studio in upstate New York and the sites of various English sojourns, woodcarver David EsterlyI don't often begin my reviews with a warning but with ''Never Work With Animals''s it seems to be an idyllic existenceappropriate. Yet itStories of a vet's life have proved popular since ''All Creatures Great and Small'' but ''Never Work With Animals'' is definitely not all cosy cottages in the snow and watching geese and coyotes when he looks up from his workbenchcompanion volume you've been looking for. There is an element of hard-won retreat from As a TV show the trials of life in this memoirauthor would argue that ''All Creatures'' lacked realism, but at as do other similar programmes. Gareth Steel says that the same time there book is an argument not suitable for the essential difficulty of the artistyounger readers and - after reading - I agree with him. He says that he's lifewritten it to inform and provoke thought, particularly amongst aspiring vets. It deals with some uncomfortable and distressing issues but it doesn'Carvers are starverst lack sensitivity,' a wizened English carver once told him. Certainly although there is no great fortune to are occasions when you would be won from a profession as obscure as limewood carving, but the rewards outweigh the hard graft for Esterlybest choosing between reading and eating.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649191</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edzard ErnstDave Letterfly Knoderer|title=A Scientist in WonderlandSpeedy: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding TroubleHurled Through Havoc|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Professor Edzard Ernst was born in Germany not long after How to summarise the end life of World War II and grew up with guilt about what had happened Dave Letterfly Knodererv in the years before he was born as well as an insatiable curiosity - with the two not being entirely entirely unconnected. He also developed an attitude of speaking his mind - as an early challenge a pithy sentence to his step-father about the death of six million Jews in the course kick off a review of the war proved. In his teens he wasnmemoir? Do you know, I really don't determined to become think I can. Dave is an author and an artist. An inspirational speaker and a professional horseman. And a recovering alcoholic. The son of a doctor - Lutheran minister, he had 's struggled with a hankering controlling father, run away to be join the circus (not a musician - despite the fact that it was the family businessmetaphor), trained horses, painted caravans, so to speakdesigned and painted theatre sets, but came round to the idea and practiced in various countries before settling in Exeter as Professor of Complementary Medicine at hit rock bottom when the universitybottle took over.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845407776</amazonuk>B0965V3LLN
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan Kennedy0008350388|title=Oscar & LucyWe Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=With the film about Alan Turing''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 ''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.'' ''The Imitation GameBookseller'' getting rave reviews 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and award nominations rightnine. It was her mother who came first, with her father joining them later. The family was hard-working, left principled and centre, determined that their children would have the sterling work done by best education possible. There was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into a shortage of anything: it was simply carefully harvested. When Otegha was ten the Bletchley Park cryptographers during WWII is quite high family acquired a car. For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in our minds. But Enigma wasn't the only code broken London and Turing wasn't the only one doing secret but heroic workthen a place at New College, Oxford. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>095646968X</amazonuk>
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|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=On Boxing Day 2004Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, when many of us even as a child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were celebrating the Christmas holidays with our families, eating leftover turkey, reading books and enjoying time with loved ones, a huge tragedy comfortable: it was unfolding on the other side sort of the world. The Boxing Day Tsunami killed over 230,000 people, and caused widespread devastation life where if she had nothing to large parts of Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, the Maldives worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and Somaliafar between. The Forkan family - Mum On a visit to a therapist, Dadas an adult, when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and four ''My Mess is a Bit of their children, were in Sri Lanka, a spur of the moment choice of destination that ultimately proved to be tragic. The parents, Kevin and Sandra, were killed Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the flood. The children, orphaned, injured and without any possessions, traveled the 200 kilometres back to a city, where they contacted elder siblings and were swiftly flown back result - or so we are given to the UKbelieve.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782433570</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen MacdonaldDaniel Gibbs with Teresa H Barker|title=H is for HawkA Tattoo on my Brain|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=When I saw Helen Macdonald speak at a nature conference, she recounted a conversation with a Samuel Johnson Prize judge. S/he had remarked that MacdonaldAlzheimer's was three books in one: is a memoir disease that slowly wears away your identity and sense of grief after her father's unexpected deathself. I have been directly affected by this cruel disease, a biography of Tas have many. H. White, Your memories and an account of falconry experiments with Mabel personality worn away like a statue over time affected the goshawkelements. Macdonald quipped It seems as if nature wants that the description made her book sound like washing powder, but itfinal victory over you and your dignity. This is what makes Daniel Gibbs's accurate nonetheless, and explains why the book won the Samuel Johnson Prize (the first memoir to do so) admirable. Daniel Gibbs is a neurologist who was diagnosed with Alzheimers and is shortlisted for the Costa Biography awardhas documented his journey in ''A Tattoo on my Brain''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224097008</amazonuk>1108838936
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dylan Thomas and Peter Bailey1529109116|title=Call Me Red: A Child’s Christmas in WalesShepherd's Journey|author=Hannah Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionLifestyle|summary=Christmas time growing up ''I want the image of a British farmer to simply be that of a person who is proudly employed in a Welsh seaside town feeding the nation. I don't think that is too much to ask.'' The stereotypical farmer was magical probably born on the land where ''his'' family have farmed for Dylan Thomas, generations. He's probably grown up without giving much thought as to what he really wants to do: he knows that he'll be a farmer. It's not always snowy the case though. Hannah Jackson was born and full brought up on the Wirral: she'd never set foot on a commercial farm until she was twenty although she'd always had a deep love of adventureanimals. From attempting Her original intention was that she would become 'Dr Jackson, whale scientist' and she was well on her way to extinguish house fires with snowballs achieving this when her life changed on a family holiday to hippo footprints in the snow his childhood in Lake District. She saw a lamb being born and, although 'Hannah Jackson, farmer' lacked the snow was kudos of her original intention, she knew that she wanted to be a time shepherd. With the determination that you'll soon realise is an essential part of wonder and pure joyher, she set about achieving her ambition.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444013467</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Henry Marsh0008333173|title=Do No HarmHungry: Stories A Memoir of Life, Death and Brain SurgeryWanting More|author=Grace Dent
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=WeI've all heard m always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the phrase judges on 'it's not brain surgeryMasterchef' but what is it really like '. You know that you're going to operate on get an honest opinion from someone's brain in whom you sense does real food rather than fine dining most of the frightening knowledge that a small slip, a slight error time. You also ponder on how she can have the most devastating consequences for the patient, look so elegant with death probably not being all that good food in front of her. I've often wondered about the worst? Henry Marsh is a Fellow of woman behind the Royal College media image and ''Hungry: A Memoir of Surgeons and Consultant Neurosurgeon at Atkinson Morley/St GeorgeWanting More's. If anyone knows what it's like then Henry Marsh is the man to tell a stunning read which will make youlaugh and break your heart in equal measures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178022592X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Klinec1504321383|title=The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love Single, Again, and Food in IranAgain, and Again|author=Louisa Pateman|rating=34.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Jennifer Klinec is ''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 daughter of Hungarian immigrant parents who ran an automotive factory adults in southwest Ontario. She learned early on her life advising her as to what they thought would be self-sufficient, even enrolling herself in boarding schools in Switzerland and Dublinbest for her. After graduation It was reinforced by all those fairy tales where the girl (she moved to London, made a pile as an investment banker, and opened 's usually fairly young) is rescued by the handsome prince who then marries her own cookery schoolso that they can live happily ever after. At age 31, though, she decided to travel Few girls are lucky enough to be brought up ''without'' the Iranian city of Yazd to learn Persian dishesexpectation that they will marry and have children. She met Vahid, 25, It was a belief and it would be many years before Louisa would conclude that ''a military veteran with an engineering background, in belief is a park and he introduced her to his mother for cooking lessonschoice''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844088235</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marion CouttsSakinu Ahronglong|title=The Iceberg: A MemoirHunter School|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary='Something has happened. A piece of news. We have had The flyleaf to this little collection tells us that it is a diagnosis that has the status work of an eventfiction. The news makes a rupture with what went before.' With these plain, unsentimental words Coutts begins her devastating yet mysteriously gorgeous account of her husband Tom LubbockThat's decline and death from a brain tumourpossibly misleading. Shortlisted for I am not sure whether it is "fiction" in the Costa Biography award and longlisted for sense that Ahronglong made it all up, or whether it is as the blurb goes on to say ''Guardianrecollections, folklore and autobiographical stories'' First Book Award. It feels like the latter. It feels like the stories he tells about his experiences as a child, as an adolescent, as an 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 was also a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize. More people should.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782393501</amazonuk>1999791282
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Wendy Cope1544641923|title=Life, Love and the ArchersAmbassadors Do It After Dinner|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=54
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=As a rule, poetry does not appeal to me - at school it was something It's tempting to think that the diplomatic life is privileged and luxurious. It might be learned and recitedprivileged, regardless of merit or meaning and I came to dread those lessons - but there are two exceptionsfamily connections tell me that it is far from luxurious. I love John DrydenNow you're not going to get many ambassadors telling you what it's really like (it's not ''Absalom and Achitopheldiplomatic'' for its irreverence - and Wendy Copeto do so, you know), but the diplomatic spouse, the accompanying baggage, well, because she speaks to me in words I can understand about matters which concern methat's an entirely different matter. I discovered her when my daughter gave me She (and it still usually is a copy of {{amazonurl|isbn=0571167055|title=Serious Concerns}} and her humorous poems tempted me to read some of the more serious content. I was smitten. Over the years I've followed with interest what she has had to say about such matters as copyright and the chance to review ''Life, Love and the Archers'' was far too tempting to miss) can tell us exactly what goes on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444795368</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0241446732|title=A Tour Our House is on Fire: Scenes of Bones: Facing Fear a Family and Looking for Lifea Planet in Crisis|author=Denise IngeMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=American-born Dr Denise Inge The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an expert opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on seventeenthmost of the parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-century mystic poet Thomas Traherneyear-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, mother to two daughtersBeata, then nine years old, and wife to an Anglican clergymanstruggled with what was happening. Her husband In such circumstances, it's appointment as Bishop of Worcester saw them move natural to seek a townhouse adjacent solution close to Worcester Cathedral – and attached home, but eventually, it became clear to the family that they were ''burned-out people on a charnel houseburned-out planet''. Whatever If they were to do with find a basement full of bones? An even more pressing question was what way to live happily again their solution would need to do with her fear of the death they represented, especially when Inge was diagnosed with inoperable sarcoma late in the writing processbe radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472913078</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=191280493X|title=Darling Monster: The Letters Coming of Lady Diana Cooper to her Son John Julius Norwich 1939-1952Age|author=Diana CooperDanny Ryan
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Though she is perhaps little remembered these days except as ''He began writing novels and poetry at the mother age of writer and historian John Julius Norwichtwelve, Lady Diana Cooper but it was one of the towering figures in society life between the wars and to take him a further forty-eight years to realise that he wasn’t very good at either. Consistently unpublished for much all that time, he remains a shining example of the period before her death in 1986hope over experience...''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009957859X</amazonuk> ''This a memoir from someone you have never heard of - but will feel like you have.''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela O'Cuneen190874572X|title=Hummingbirds in My Hair: Adventures of a Diplomatic Wife in the CaribbeanLetters from Tove|author=Tove Jansson (Author), Boel Westin (Editor), Helen Svensson (Editor), Sarah Death (Translator)|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Pamela O'Cuneen was what is known in Back at the business as a 'diplomatic wife': beginning of the spouse of a diplomat sent abroad century, I went on holiday to represent his countryNepal. It's generally unpaid I met a wonderful Finnish woman and extremely hard work we became sort-of- friends. Ican've always thought of t remember if it as was on that holiday or a later one of the original BOGOF dealsthat Paula told me I really had to read Tove Jansson. When we first meet Pamela she and her husband, KJ, have been transferred from their beloved Africa to Suriname, or ''Suri-where?'' as people always responded when I do know that it was mentioned to them. It four years later that I finally acquired an English translation of The Summer Book, and that I eagerly awaited the ''usedSort Of'' to be Dutch Guyana on translations of the Caribbean coast rest of South America Jansson's work and there are few people who would think of it in terms of a holiday destinationdevoured them as soon as I could get my hands on them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373637</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1908745819|title=Hitler's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's BodyguardSurfacing |author=Rochus MischKathleen Jamie|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I am proud to declare an interest in all things HolocaustSometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one of the key areas of which was the last days of Hitler – the Downfallhas your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so, if you unless it turns out that we didn't likethe book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, way before youtube satiristsrarely get it wrong. So In this bookcase, from the man who for some unspecified years I was the last eye-witness to have been in the Fuhrerbunker at the end told why. The blurb speaks of the Nazi regimeauthor considering ''an older, was always going to be less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a great readbad description of where I am. It remained Add to that even after my love of the foreword dismissed its own booknatural world, pointing out differences here to the canon of thought about those aspects of the timings etc of April/May 1945, poetic and declaring the author somewhat naïve in lyrical that are about style not being so awareform, circumspect and authoritative substance most of all, about the major points of WWIIconnection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848327498</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Diary of a Mad Diva1906852472|authortitle=Joan Rivers|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=The late Joan Rivers was, without Wild Child: Growing Up a doubt, a character. Actress, comedian, writer, director, presenter, she was well known in the USA and beyond for her sharp tongue and no holds barred persona. This was the last of the dozen books she published, her final title before her death in September 2014.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0425269027</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|title=Life on AirNomad|author=David AttenboroughIan Mathie|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I was one of the generation who grew For Ian Mathie fans there is good and bad news. Ian has come up when David Attenborough was a giant among presenters of wildlife programmes on television, and anything with the missing link in his name attached was narrative, the story of a must-watchvery unusual childhood (yes, the very years that made him the amazing man he became). At The bad – well it's hardly news two years later – is that the timebook is published posthumously. As always, it's beautifully written, with many exciting moments. What I had no idea most enjoyed was the feeling that he was also one many of the pivotal characters questions in Ian Mathie's later books are answered in the development of broadcasting, having been controller of BBC2 and director of programming for BBC TV for several years''Wild Child'' with a satisfying clunk. These days, he is probably best remembered for writing and presenting the nine ‘Life’ series, a comprehensive survey of Seemingly all life on that's now left in the planetdrawer is unpublishable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849908524</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1999811402|title=The Last EscaperPainting Snails|author=Peter TunstallStephen John Hartley
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Christopher Isherwood is It's very difficult to classify ''Painting Snails'': originally I thought that as it's loosely based around a year on an allotment it would be a writer whose work was often (in fact nearly always) biographicallifestyle book, but you're not going to get advice on what to plant when and one who was always very open about his personal lifewhere for the best results. Interest in The answer would be something along the life lines of Isherwood seems to have been rife recently'try it and see'. Then I considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, did an engineering apprenticeship, with became a film about Isherwood busker, finally got into medical school and Bachardy released is now an A&E consultant (part-time). I found out that there's an awful lot more to what goes on in 2008a Major Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from ''Casualty'', an adaptation of Isherwoodbut that isn's t really what the book 'A Single Mans about. There' released in 2009s a lot about rock & roll, and a BBC adaptation which seems to be the real passion of Hartley's life, but it didn'Christopher and his Kindt actually fit into the entertainment genre either. Did we have a category for ' released in 2011, as well as doing the impossible the seemingly countless revivals of hard way'? Yep - that'Cabarets the one. It's an autobiography.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700827</amazonuk>
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