==Autobiography==
{{newreview
|author=Jeanette Winterson
|title=Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=
I saw the BBC's 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit' a semi-autobiographical account of Winterson's childhood. This book's title is equally memorable and unique and we learn that it's a line Mrs Winterson said to the young Jeanette.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093452</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angie Beasley
|summary=There's something about Alan Titchmarsh that you can't help liking. He's got a wry sense of humour, seems unfailingly positive and, best of all, was born in my home town of Ilkley. You really can't get much better than that, now can you? 'When I Was A Nipper' is a look not just at his life in the fifties (although there ''is'' a lot about him) but about the way that things were then. There's an unspoken question about what we can learn from how we lived then and how we can apply this to our lives today. It's pure nostalgia only lightly seasoned with the reality of outside privies and harsh working conditions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184990152X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Powell
|title=Below Stairs: The Bestselling Memoirs of a 1920s Kitchen Maid
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''Below Stairs'' was first published in 1968, and it's no exaggeration to claim Margaret Powell as the trailblazer for the memoir genre. This book encouraged hundreds of autobiographies of common life, and spawned a whole generation of tv programmes. In its vernacular and popularist way, it was probably as influential as Mayhew's 'London Labour and the London Poor'. Before her, only famous people wrote their stories, and that without too much regard for reality. Unless they were literary writers, achievements were downplayed and emotions hidden away, in the stilted style of the British stiff upper lip. Not so Margaret Powell, who became a publishing sensation when she blasted through with a robust Voice rather than a polished narrative, in the first-ever tale of an ordinary servant writing about everyday life below stairs. Imagine being talent-spotted from an evening class and invited to write your memoir: those were the days!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535382</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Victoria Coren
|title=For Richer, For Poorer: Confessions of a Player
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Some things are in the blood. For Victoria Coren it was cards. As a child she and brother Giles were taught to play Blackjack by their grandfather. He called it Pontoon but the most valuable lesson was that grandfather was ''always'' the dealer and ''always'' the winner. Giles played Poker but wasn't really a gambler. Victoria was one of life's risk-takers and she leant to the more adventurous side of her father's family. She was unhappy at school, preferring the company of her brother's straight-talking friends to the bitchy all-girl atmosphere at school. In the intervening twenty years she's won a million dollars, but for her it's never been about the money.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847672930</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amy Chua
|title=Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Amy Chua has firm beliefs about parenting. She brought up her two daughters, Sophia and Lulu, using a strict set of rules – including no sleepovers, no playdates, no school plays, no choice of extra curricular activity, no grades less than an A, and no being less than the number 1 student in any 'academic' subject. Then there's the piano and violin practice… On hearing she called her
daughter Sophia 'garbage', an acquaintance of hers burst into tears. The thought of praising one of the girls for getting a B, as many American parents do, would no doubt have a similar affect on Chua. Mother – or monster?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408812673</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Eva Petulengro
|title=The Girl in the Painted Caravan: Memories of a Romany Childhood
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Eva Petulengro was born in a painted caravan in 1939. Her Romany family had travelled in Norfolk and Lincolnshire for generations. She has had a very successful career as a clairvoyant, writer of horoscope columns and publisher of magazines, and her daughter is also a well known media astrologer. The Girl in the Painted Caravan is a memoir of her childhood and youth, up until her marriage in her 20s and the beginning of her career.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330519999</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Harry Leslie Smith
|title=1923: A Memoir
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Harry Leslie Smith was born in 1923. If you're wondering about the title – that's the explanation – and although it's when Harry began his life it's not where his story began. He takes us back some years before to his father's family with its roots in mining and a sideline in running a pub which was to make them comfortable if not wealthy. Harry's father was middle-aged when he got involved with Lillian, a teenage girl. Unsurprisingly his family were not impressed or welcoming when the pair married because a child was on the way. Albert Smith expected that he would inherit the pub when his father died, but it passed to his uncle and so began a life of disappointment for Albert and Lillian.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1450254136</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Keith Richards
|title=Life
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Nearly forty years ago, Keith Richards was considered the next most likely rock'n'roll star to succumb to drugs. The man has defied all the odds in staying alive, and continuing to do what he has been doing for almost half a century. In the process, he has earned the sometimes grudging, sometimes unqualified respect of those who would once never given him the time of day.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297854399</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Shilling
|title=The Stranger in the Mirror: A Memoir of Middle Age
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Middle-aged women disappear. They are not see on television, their lives do not appear in newspapers, the legions of novels that are written each year rarely feature them. At least, that is what the author Jane Shilling believes as she wakes up aged 47 to find the narrative of her contemporaries and their lives which she has been reading about and living in parallel with since leaving university has vanished. She looks in the mirror and sees a face she does not recognise. Even with a punishing regime of early bed, no alcohol and litres of water, it refuses to regain its youthful bloom. So she decides to take a magnifying glass to this particular moment in time, this journey between youth and old age.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701181001</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christopher Isherwood
|title=Diaries Volume 1
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=In January 1939 Christopher Isherwood left England for America in the company of poet WH Auden. This hefty volume covers his diaries from that date until August 1960, when he celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. A 49-page introduction setting out the background leads us into the entries, which are divided into three sections – The Emigration, to the end of 1944; The Post-war Years, to 1956; and The Late Fifties. After these we have a chronology and glossary, or to put it more accurately a section of brief biographies of the main characters mentioned, these two sections comprising over a hundred pages altogether.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555824</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Burnside
|title=Waking Up In Toytown
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=After years of alcoholism and borderline insanity, John Burnside decides to become normal. This involves moving to Surrey, working in an office and settling into a numbing daily routine he hopes will prevent him drifting back towards bad habits. These memoirs chronicle the failure of his bid for normality and subsequent disillusionment with the project. It's a solipsistic account but the writing is powerful and it draws you in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507838</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rhoda Janzen
|title=Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Coming Home
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Even although the obliging blurb on the back cover tells the reader a little about being Mennonite, I couldn't resist looking it up in the dictionary. I was intrigued to start reading. And emblazoned across the front cover is 'No 1 In The US'. Great praise indeed, I thought. But how would it go down across the pond? Time to find out ...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085789031X</amazonuk>
}}
