|summary=Natalie Taylor was just twenty four years old, and five months pregnant, when her husband died in a tragic accident. This memoir takes us from the day she found out he was dead through to her son's first birthday. Natalie's situation is horribly sad. I can't even begin to imagine what I would have done in her place. The record of her grieving process is very raw and honest. Based upon her journals that she kept through this time her pain leaps off the page and makes you feel sick inside for the horror she's facing. I liked that she doesn't seem to be advocating a correct way to grieve. She simply states how she felt, how she reacted at each moment, be that calmly and quietly or with raging, screaming tears. Luckily she had an extremely supportive family and a good group of friends and it is interesting - if rather disturbing - to follow her progress as she deals with her life without her husband.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444724673</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Schama
|title=Scribble, Scribble, Scribble: Writing on Ice Cream, Obama, Churchill and My Mother
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=The collection has been divided into reader-friendly sections named, for example - ''Travelling, Testing Democracy, Cooking and Eating'', to name but three. As a professor of Art History, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there's also a rather chunky section on Schama's thoughts on the art world. Politics also is a centre-stage subject. Each article is headed with where it first appeared and the numerous Guardian pieces may be well-known to some. So I suppose you could say that this is second time around, for those who missed the first publication. Not a bad thing at all when the writing is as good as this, I'd say.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546655</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Barbara Sinatra
|title=Lady Blue Eyes: My Life With Frank Sinatra
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Barbara Blakeley, born in 1926, was married firstly to Robert Oliver, an executive, with whom she had a son, and secondly to Zeppo Marx. But it was the already thrice-married and thrice-divorced Francis Albert Sinatra, whom she had idolized as a singer for a long time, with whom she would make her most enduring marriage, and vice versa. They tied the knot in 1976, and stayed together until his death in 1998.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091937248</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Burley
|title=Bipolar Parent
|rating=3
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Anna Burley keeps telling herself that she is a responsible adult now and works on the idea that most people would see her as a normal, well-grounded person. What people ''don't'' see is the story of her childhood. She wrote it down to get rid of it, to get it out her system and rid herself of those pockets of pain which live under her skin. She's decided that she's not going to run from it all any longer. ''Bipolar Parent'' is the story of her childhood and the parent who had such an influence in making her into what she is today.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1456775332</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian A Griffiths
|title=DMD Life Art and Me
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Ian Griffiths suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy - a form of muscular dystrophy which causes muscle degeneration. It begins in early childhood with difficulty in walking and progresses to cause problems with breathing and all the voluntary muscles. Ultimately it's fatal. Men and boys – it's linked to the X chromosome so affects only males – with the disease have a life expectancy of between the late teens and mid-twenties. Ian's in his mid-twenties now and he's written 'DMD Life: art and me' to explain what it really feels like to live with the disease. And when I say 'really feels like' I do mean that. Ian doesn't gloss over ''anything''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907652337</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bob Marshall-Andrews
|title=Off Message: The Complete Antidote to Political Humbug
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Bob Marshall-Andrews entered Parliament in 1997, rather too late to be a career politician (he was already an established QC) and with a profound distrust of authority. He had no aspirations towards office, which was perhaps as well for all concerned as he would become best known for being a dissident. I occasionally enquired as to which party held his allegiance and eventually concluded that he went with his conscience. The last three Labour administrations have spawned more political memoirs than any other – and I did wonder if this would be just one more to add to the pile.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684412</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Karen Blixen
|title=Out Of Africa
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=It's more than a quarter of a century since I first saw the film ''Out of Africa'' and it's one of the few that have stayed with me over the intervening years. It wasn't just the story, but the personality of Karen Blixen and the wonderful landscape of the Ngong Hills, south of Nairobi, in Kenya's Rift Valley. I remember looking for this book at the time, but being unable to find it, so the opportunity to read it now was too good to miss.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951437</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sara Wheeler
|title=Access All Areas: Selected Writings 1990-2010
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
|summary=This is a great book to acquire if your general knowledge of historical adventurers is as haphazard as mine. Somewhere along the line, I'd missed out on Scott and Shackleton, and it's very satisfying indeed to fill those gaps from such a reliable informant. One brisk section, for example, managed to encapsulate both Antartica's history and further outlook, along with sufficient atmospheric detail to ensure we mortals understood just what it feels like to sleep in Scott's hut during a wintry gale.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090712</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Betty Lussier
|title=Intrepid Woman: Betty Lussier's Secret War, 1942-1945
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Betty Lussier was born in Alberta, Canada. At the height of the depression her father bought a Maryland farm at a bank foreclosure sale, they crossed the border to the States and settled down to the hard life of raising dairy cattle and the crops needed to feed them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1591144493</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ian Mathie
|title=Bride Price
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary='Bride Price' has proved an even more absorbing book than I anticipated from its Amazon write-up. I read it in a single sitting; the issues it raised overwhelming my thoughts for the next couple of days. In terms of its overall flavour, quality and impact value, I'd bracket it with the classic 'Walkabout' by James Vance Marshall.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906852081</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Isaiah Berlin
|title=Enlightening: Letters 1946 - 1960
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Isaiah Berlin wrote in tribute to the memory of Dorothy de Rothschild of her personality, '…overwhelming charm, great dignity, a very lively sense of humour, pleasure in the oddities of life, an unconquerable vitality and a kind of eternal youth and an eager responsiveness to all that passed…' Reading this second volume of letters, now available in paperback, covering Berlin's most creative period, these same characteristics might be aptly applied to Sir Isaiah himself. However, as this most self-aware of intellectuals recognised, his loquacity and compulsive socialising were driven by a persistent need to escape a sense of unreality, an inner void. In these letters he writes, 'my quest for gaiety is a perpetual defence against the extreme sense of the abyss by which I have been affected ever since I can remember myself…'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844138348</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bill Larkworthy
|title=Doctor Lark: The Benefits of a Medical Education
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Bill Larkworthy is a pleasant fellow who has lead an eventful, but not world-shattering life. So at the outset it's probably worth saying that this self-deprecating tale won't light many literary fires. If fireworks are what you are looking for, search elsewhere. On the other hand, I always find ordinary people's stories of everyday life fascinating, as well as providing useful background, or what used to be called 'general knowledge', about other parts of the world. Since my general knowledge of the Gulf States is more or less limited to Lawrence of Arabia and current news reports, a little padding won't go amiss. So yes, I did enjoy this read, and I imagine the Saga age group will borrow it in steady numbers from libraries (if they can find one open). It would make a good present for a man of a certain age, which is:
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906852065</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alan Titchmarsh
|title=When I Was A Nipper
|rating=4
|genre=History
|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>
}}
