==Biography==
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{{newreview
|author=Rodney Bolt
|title=As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil: The Impossible Life of Mary Benson
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Since I hadn't previously heard of Archbishop Benson, let alone his wife, I must commend the title, cover and advertising of this book. All of the above provided an accurate and irresistible glimpse of the biography within, and I wasn't one whit disappointed in my choice.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843548615</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Barbara Sinatra
|summary=In November 2007 the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy was newly divorced from his second wife and, despite his position and busy life, feeling rather lonely. He accepted an invitation to a dinner party from a friend and met supermodel and recording artist, Carla Bruni. The attraction between them was instant – she had already said that she wanted a man with nuclear power and he was smitten by the attentions of a beautiful, famous and intelligent woman. Within months they were married.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0907633145</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roland Huntford
|title=Race for the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=In 1910 two European ships set out for the Antarctic. 'Terra Nova' was carrying British explorers under the leadership of Captain Robert Scott, while 'Fram' sailed with a rival Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen. The basic facts can be briefly summarized. Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on 14 December 1911 and returned home to a hero's welcome, while Scott reached the same destination 35 days later, only to perish with his men on the return journey. Their bodies were found by a search party some eight months after they had died.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441169822</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Charles Margerison
|title=Amazing Women: Inspirational Stories
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The cover of this book tells the reader that these short ''bioviews'' or biographies can be read in 10 mins or so. This is one of a series within ''The Amazing People Club'' courtesy of the ''Amazing People Team''. There is a rather fulsome ''Author's Note'' followed by a one-page introduction. I was immediately struck by the fact that, given the various feats of these women, I was anxious to read about them - and not about Dr Margerison. Less is more. He goes on to say (by now I'm getting a bit tired of the smiling Margerison) that 'The stories are inspirational and can help you achieve your ambitions in your own journey through life.' All of this and especially that last sentence sits rather uneasily with me, I'm afraid.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921629940</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Selina Hastings
|title=The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=These days, W. Somerset Maugham seems to be something of an anachronism. In his heyday, for much of a career which lasted from the end of the Victorian era to the 1950s, he was one of the most successful and widely read of all British writers, with his novels, short stories and plays spawning more film adaptations than any other author. Yet over the last thirty years or so he seems to have slipped from favour, as if his preoccupation with the Edwardian England in which he grew up and his end-of-empire settings are deeply embedded in an age we would rather forget. Moreover, as this very comprehensive biography demonstrates, he was not the most pleasant of individuals. The unhappy child, orphaned by the time he was ten, afflicted with a lifelong stammer and brought up by an aunt and uncle who showed him no affection, grew up to lead a long and unhappy life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719565553</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew McConnell Stott
|title=The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain's Greatest Comedian
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=This book has won several prestigious awards, so my expectations were raised before I'd even opened the book. And of all the plaudits given on the back cover, my favourite was Simon Callows' '(A) great big Christmas pudding of a book ...' Stott has researched his subject thoroughly. First up, there's a Grimaldi family tree, a Prologue, an Introduction and all this before you get to the story proper, so to speak.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847677614</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Martin Davidson
|title=The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My SS Grandfather's Secret Past and How Hitler Seduced a Generation
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Meet Martin Davidson. Now, when I start my reviews like that, normally it means he's the main character, but he's not here. He's big in the world of BBC History documentaries, and grew up in the UK, half Scottish and half German, knowing that many of his older relatives lived through the Second World War. Foremost among them was his German grandfather, Bruno Langbehn, who would have been of fighting age - in his 30s - during the Third Reich. Nothing much was ever said about Bruno's own history during the war, except for many inflammatory, rising comments by Bruno himself. It took the old man to die for the truth to be admitted by Martin's mother - their forefather was in the SS.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916161</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sjeng Scheijen
|title=Diaghilev: A Life
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Sergey Diaghilev was one of the towering figures in the artistic world of Russia, and indeed Europe, at the start of the 20th century. Born in 1872 the ambitious son of a bankrupt vodka producer from Perm, and a mother who died a few days later probably from puerperal fever, by his early twenties he was on close terms with such names as Tolstoy, Zola, Tchaikovsky and Brahms. He worked his way into the ranks of the cultural cognoscenti at St Petersburg and launched the itinerant troupe which would become the Ballets Russes, playing to packed houses as far west as Britain and the United States.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681642</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Howarth
|title=We Die Alone
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Consider taking a five day sail in a small fishing boat the height of the North Sea from Shetland, to try and establish, train and supply some potentially vital anti-German resistance in the far, far north of occupied Norway, your homeland. Imagine the sight of heavy naval parades where you intended to land, as galling proof that your intel is ages out of date. Ponder too the fact that you get reported to the Nazis due to the most ridiculous slight of fortune. All your colleagues are dead or captured, your equipment blown up with your trawler to keep it safe from Jerry hands, half your big toe has been shot off, and you're forced to go on the run in one of Europe's last, and coldest, wildernesses. And you have no idea whatsoever quite how bad this scenario is going to get.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678459</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Janet Soskice
|title=Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Sisters of Sinai tells the story of two extraordinary, Victorian women who unearthed an important early copy of the Gospels from a remote monastery in Egypt. It hardly seems possible that they organised and executed such remarkable feats of unaccompanied travel during an age in which women's freedom was hidebound by their status as the inferior sex. Janet Soskice is well-placed as a feminist philosopher and theologian to explore their lives.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954654X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Natasha McElhone
|title=After You: Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=What would you do if, without warning, your brilliant, loving, superman partner died from a catastrophic heart event at the untimely age of 43, leaving you with two young boys and a third on the way? Most of us would probably reach for the Valium and book a very long course of counseling. But Natascha McElhone couldn't because she was already stretched, juggling a busy transatlantic career as an actress as well as caring for her sparky young family. Coping as a single parent left no spare time for self-indulgence; within months she had a new baby as well. So she found her own way, grabbing instead at odd moments to write in her well-established diary. These short entries … e-mails, almost … to her dead husband form the basis of 'After You'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919098</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Peter Firstbrook
|title=The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=The book jacket states that this is 'the untold story of an African family' and with a presidential photograph of Barack Obama, the book is certainly eye-catching. Along with, I'm sure, millions of others, I've read 'The Audacity Of Hope' and was charmed and blown away in almost equal measure, so I was keen to get started on this book.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092725</amazonuk>
}}
