==Biography==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Valerie Grove
|title=So Much To Tell
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Kaye Webb’s career would be the envy of many a young bookworm. From 1961 to 1978 she ran Puffin Books, the children’s division of Penguin. I still have some paperbacks from that time with “Kaye Webb – Editor” on the first page inside the front cover.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142008</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matt MacAllester
|summary=Even though I'm not a Manchester United fan, Eric Cantona is one of my all time favourite players and I was really excited to get the opportunity to read a book which was billed as revealing his innermost thoughts, and being the definitive account of his career.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230706347</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alistair Duncan
|title=Close to Holmes: A Look at the Connections Between Historical London, Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Even today, London is a remarkable compromise of the old and the new. As Alistair Duncan shows in this volume, the city of Conan Doyle and Holmes has changed – yet not changed. There have been a handful of books in the past on 'Holmes's London', but this is the first of its kind to place equal emphasis on places associated with the detective and his creator.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312500</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul R Spiring (Editor)
|title=Bobbles & Plum: Four Satirical Playlets by Bertram Fletcher Robinson and PG Wodehouse
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=P.G. Wodehouse needs little if any introduction, but Bertram Fletcher Robinson's life and career were cut short and he is little known outside his connections with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This set of satirical playlets on which they collaborated, published in journals between 1904 and 1907 and virtually forgotten since, are presented in book form for the first time. As such they show how the careers of both men were evolving, particularly while Wodehouse was finding his feet and experimenting with the different facets of journalism before finding his niche in comic fiction.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312586</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Wynter Bee and Lucy Clapham
|title=People of the Day 4: The Rich and Famous Caricatured
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Have you ever been asked to buy a book in aid of a charity and wished that you'd given a donation and not taken the book? Well, if you have I'm hoping to persuade you that there are exceptions to every rule and this book in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust is definitely worth the cover price.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954811038</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeremy Nicholas
|title=Idle Thoughts on Jerome K Jerome: A 150th Anniversary Celebration
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Although he was a prolific novelist, short story writer, dramatist and journalist, Jerome Klapka Jerome will always be remembered first and foremost as the author of ''Three Men in a Boat''. This fascinating anthology, published on the 150th anniversary of his birth, reminds us that there was far more to the man than that one admittedly enduring book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956221203</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Richard D Ryder
|title=Nelson, Hitler and Diana
|rating=4
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Was Horatio Nelson, a navy officer of great renown, forever thrusting himself into the limelight, doing it because his mother passed away when he was nine? Was Hitler overly affected by his father dying in a time of paternal disapproval, and a kind of Oedipal reaction to being the man in the house making him suffer when she herself died? And can Diana, Princess of Wales' parents' divorce lead to a claim she was a sufferer of borderline personality disorder?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401662</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Trevor Hamilton
|title=Immortal Longings: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian Search for Life After Death
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Born in 1843, Frederic Myers began his career as a classical lecturer at Cambridge University, but disliked teaching and soon gave it up in favour of writing poetry and essays in literature. Although his social circle included men such as Gladstone, Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning and Prince Leopold, the most intellectual of Queen Victoria's sons, his books (which are not so well remembered today) might have been his sole claim to fame, had it not been for his passionate curiosity about the meaning of human life. If it had a purpose, he was convinced, it could only be discovered through the study of human experiences.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401239</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul R Spiring (Editor)
|title=The World of Vanity Fair - Bertram Fletcher Robinson
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Every now and then, you comes across a really sumptuous book, where just turning and looking at the pages takes you into another world.
Such is the case with this one. ''Vanity Fair'' was a gentler Victorian forerunner of ''Private Eye''. Subtitled, ''A Weekly'' ''Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares'', it appeared between 1868 and 1914. Like the more successful, longer-lasting ''Punch'', it began with radical aspirations, intending ''to expose what'' [the editor] ''perceived to be the'' ''vanities of the elite social classes''. However its satire was gently humorous rather than malicious, and almost everybody who was portrayed in its pages was flattered.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312535</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Piers Dudgeon
|title=Captivated: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers and the Dark Side of Neverland
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=According to D.H. Lawrence, J.M. Barrie ''has a fatal touch for those he loves. They die.''
Barrie had an extraordinary fascination with a childlike world of innocence and young boys who never grew up. Had it merely stopped at creating Peter Pan, all well and good. Unfortunately this obsession manifested itself in an unhealthy involvement with others, notably the du Maurier family.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520451</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emma Charles
|title=How Could He Do It?
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Emma Charles was on the edge of thinking that she and her family were doing quite well. They were an ordinary family – mum, dad, two daughters, three dogs, a rabbit and a couple of guinea pigs. Sprinkle in an Open University course for Mum, private schooling for the girls, a nice car in the drive of the nice house, good clothes and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with the way that life was going.
Then her fifteen year old daughter, Tamsin, gave her 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 certainties, the hopes and the expectations. 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 Walker's beautiful memoir of her childhood in Jamaica and London in the 1960's. This is a book inevitably compared with Andrea Levy's ''Small Island''. It follows similar ground, but the main difference and great strength, is that it's the real narrative of mother and daughter. As 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 contemporaries.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340960809</amazonuk>
}}
