==Biography==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Will Birch
|title=Ian Dury: The Definitive Biography
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Ian Dury was always one of the most individual, even contrary characters in the musical world. In a branch of showbiz where people often relied on good looks as a short cut to stardom, he was no oil painting. During the pub rock era, he and his group, the Blockheads, ploughed a lonely furrow which owed more to jazz-funk than rock'n'roll, and his songs extolled the virtues of characters from Billericay or Plaistow rather than those from Memphis or California. Alongside the young punk rock upstarts with whom he competed for inches in the rock press, he was comparatively middle-aged. As if that was not enough, in his own words childhood illness had left him a permanent 'raspberry ripple'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0283071036</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Simpson
|summary=No-one can ever look at the night skies above our heads as Galileo did. The light pollution covering so much of our planet makes it impossible to see nearly as much as he might. Conversely, he would have adored living in a time such as ours – with the technology to show him so much he couldn't see, so much he daren't dream of. Sitting happily between those two extremes was William Herschel.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039306574X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Grann
|title=The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=For Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett there was more to the Amazonian jungle than El Dorado. His target was a treasure of a different nature – a lost city to be discovered because it was a city, not for any spurious material wealth it might hold. Could an entire civilisation have been founded in the inhospitable tracks of rain forest, and left remains he might find fame in locating? As this brilliant biography shows, Fawcett was the best man around to find it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847374360</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Wynter Bee and Lucy Clapham
|title=People of the Day 3: The Rich and Famous Caricatured
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=I often find myself paying money for books where the profits go to charity and I'm usually left with the feeling that I'd much rather someone had simply asked me for a donation and not wasted the paper. Every once in a while a book comes along which proves me wrong and there's only one way to describe the ''People of the Day'' series. The books are a delight and it's all in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095481102X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Matteson
|title=Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Louisa May Alcott and her father, Amos Bronson, shared the same birthday, she being born on 29 November 1832, his thirty-third. Throughout their lives, father and daughter remained extraordinarily close, and even almost died together. When he finally succumbed after a stroke and long-drawn out illness on 4 March 1888, she was too ill to be told and followed him two days later. Between them, they saw life as 'a persistent but failed quest for perfection', regarding themselves in their vain pursuit of paradise on earth as Eden's outcasts, hence the title of this dual biography.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393333590</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ranginui Walker
|title=Paki Harrison: Tohunga Whakairo : the Story of a Master Carver
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=It was an inspired choice that Ranginui Walker was commissioned to write this book. He successfully places the extraordinary character of master carver Paki Harrison into an historical, cultural, academic and political context, whilst never letting us forget that this almost mythical genius is very much a man with his personal conflicts, successes and devotion.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0143010069</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Megan Hutching
|title=Over the Wide and Trackless Sea: the Pioneer Women and Girls of New Zealand
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This book offers a valuable insight into the lives of twelve pioneer women who suffered, endured and triumphed in New Zealand.
Their journey by boat from Europe to New Zealand was a long and sometimes perilous one. The European explorers had previously been certain that their destination existed, mainly because they abhorred a vacuum, and couldn't believe there could be such a vast expanse of ocean without the existence of a great land. Some also believed that without a land mass south of the Tropic of Capricorn, the world would be tipped upside down, while others were fearful they would burn up whilst crossing the equator, a myth finally dispelled by the Portuguese voyaging around Africa.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869507061</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joanne Drayton
|title=Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Joanne Drayton successfully introduces us to the reclusive Ngaio Marsh, her extraordinary success, and her love for the theatre, the arts, her friends and the country she loved and would always call home.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869506359</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Wendy Kendall
|title=Wind Driven: Barbara Kendall's Story
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Barbara Kendell is an extraordinary woman. She has not only won windsurfing medals at three Olympics, she is a mother, an IOC representative, public speaker and mentor. This biography, written by her sister, tells the inspiring story of an extraordinary woman who overcame her personal challenges and remains at the top of her sport after twenty years of competition.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>186979043X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brian W Pugh and Paul R Spiring
|title=Bertram Fletcher Robinson: A Footnote to The Hound of the Baskervilles
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Bertram Fletcher Robinson was a great friend of Arthur Conan Doyle and a prolific writer, who tragically died aged just thirty-six in 1907. His collaboration was crucial to the revival of Sherlock Holmes in ACD's best-known tale, ''The Hound of the Baskervilles''. This volume is described as a 'footnote' to that story and while there is much of value to Sherlock Holmes fans, I got little impression of BFR the man, despite the meticulously recorded details which the authors have painstakingly uncovered.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312403</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=George Johnson
|title=The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=''The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments'' looks at the most elegant, stylish, simple, ground-breaking, thrilling and inspiring experiments throughout history. There's a real feel that this is how science should be done: one person, alone in a room, forming a hypothesis and creating a method to test it. It doubles as a potted biography of some of the greatest scientists ever, but it's more about the experiments themselves than the people.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224071963</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonathan Keates
|title=Handel: The Man and His Music
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The chances are that most people who have any knowledge of classical music, even if it's only some familiarity with short soundbites, will have something by Handel embedded in their subconscious – probably a few bars from 'Hallelujah Chorus'. There are few other composers of whom the same can be said. The exceptions – Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mozart come to mind – also seem a little better known as historical figures, while Handel remains something of an unknown quantity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082027</amazonuk>
}}
