|summary=Having already written biographies of Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen, among others, to say nothing of a study of Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan, Claire Tomalin is admirably qualified to produce a major life of the author to mark the bicentenary of his birth in 1812. (Sadly, she says this will be her last large-scale book).
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917672</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jermaine Jackson
|title=You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson in the two years since his sudden passing will be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge of his life and death, there will surely be few if any to rival this account by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve Dennis.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007435665</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Graham Holderness
|title=Nine Lives of William Shakespeare
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=There is a subtle irony in the fact that the world’s best-known playwright, and possibly the most famous author of all time, is a character about whom so little is known for certain. Nevertheless, as we are looking at someone who died nearly 400 years ago, the indisputable documentary evidence is bound to be lacking.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441151850</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anne Isba
|title=Dickens's Women: His Life and Loves
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=
The subject of the several women in the life of Charles Dickens might at first glance seem an unusual theme to build a biography around, but this fairly brief but penetrating book serves its purpose well. The author’s foreword begins by telling us that Dickens was a man who 'craved a love so unconditional that the yearning was unlikely to be satisfied in this world, a man in thrall to a vision of a womanhood so idealized that it was incompatible with everyday domesticity'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441107207</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bruce Duffy
|title=Disaster was my God
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The life of Arthur Rimbaud must be one of the most outrageous in literary history, more scandalous than Wilde, more self-destructive than Malcolm Lowery, Rimbaud was the boy poet and iconoclast who took on the literary establishment at end of the nineteenth century and won. So Duffy's fictional account, based closely around the actual facts of Rimbaud's life, was bound to be an exciting and furious, and he doesn't disappoint. This is a difficult book to put down.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685273</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Oppenheimer
|title=Machiavelli: A Life Beyond Ideology
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Machiavelli, 'the first philosopher to define politics as treachery', has probably been better known as an adjective, Machiavellian being a synonym for duplicity in statecraft, than as a historical person. Interestingly, the term 'Machiavel' became common in English usage as an adjective and noun around 1570, although none of his works were translated into the language for another seventy years or so after that.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847252214</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roger Hutchinson
|title=The Silent Weaver
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=There is no question but that the story of Angus has all the right ingredients for a fascinating study. Taken from his Scottish Lowlands agricultural early childhood to the isolation of a Hebridean island of South Uist, joining the last ever horse platoon in the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, then mental breakdown and effective incarceration for almost all the rest of his life, he created some of the most unusual works of folk art that have existed this century. And Hutchison tackles every angle of this rich narrative, exploring the military thinking behind how horse regiments were to combat Hitler, through to the operations of mental health care in later twentieth century Scotland, and all points in between.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841589713</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Harry Thompson
|title=Tintin: Herge and His Creation
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=I love Tintin. I love his quiff and his innocence, his plus-fours and his foreign adventures, I love Snowy the dog and most of all I love Captain Haddock and the flamboyance of his blistering barnacles language. So I was thrilled to see a biography of the character and Hergé, his creator, and I picked it up with enthusiasm.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546726</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stephen Games
|title=Pevsner: The Early Life: Germany and Art
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Nikolai Pewsner – the minor changes of name came as a young adult - was born in Saxony in 1902 into a Russian-Jewish family. Just too young to avoid having to take part in the war, he had studied art history at no less than four universities by the age of 22. He then became an assistant keeper at the Dresden Gemaldegalerie, and four years later he was appointed lecturer at Gottingen University.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441190937</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nancy Mitford
|title=The Sun King
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes that you'll need no introduction to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he was four years old and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the reigns of Charles I, James II, William III and into the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne. He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Kelly
|title=Finding Poland
|rating=5
|genre=History
|summary=Looking at any historical map of Poland anyone may see how its borders have changed over the centuries. Where will you find the Polish home? One answer must be that it is founded deep in the hearts of the Polish people who fought for the liberty and the integrity of the Polish homeland. Now consider the promontory of land around Vilnius, or Wilno as it was then known, which was contained inside Poland in 1921. It was an area in which the small market town of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings and just large enough to warrant a town hall, was situated. These wild borderlands – known as the Kresy - were fought over for centuries by Austrians, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. It was here that Matthew Kelly's great-grandfather, who had imbibed the values and élan of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach with his clever young wife, Hanna. They were deeply committed to progress through education and to peaceably raising their two little daughters. However, the dreadful and calamitous year of 1939, was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in the most cynical pact.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515997</amazonuk>
}}
