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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Sisters of the East End1788360702|author=Helen Batten|ratingtitle=3.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Katie Crisp had never intended to become a nun. Raised by non-religious parentsCharles, her family frowned upon organised religion and when Katie started secretly going to church, they strongly disapproved. When Katie ran to the aid of a stroke victim, she had a vision that changed her life. She saw herself dressed as a nun with a large silver cross hanging from her neck. She decided to follow her calling and join the community of St John the Divine, a group of Anglican nuns dedicated to nursing and midwifery. She thus shed her old identity and became known as Sister Catherine Mary.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091951771</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Jerry Oppenheimer|title=Crazy Rich: Power, Scandal and Tragedy Inside the Johnson & Johnson DynastyEdzard Ernst|rating=34

|summary=Back in 1885 three brothers were inspired by a speech by Joseph ListerFor over forty years, the pioneer Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of antiseptic surgery, to create a range of surgical dressings - such things were previously unheard of - alternative medicine and this was the beginning of Johnson & Johnson, providers of Band-Aids and baby powdercomplementary therapies. It also brought phenomenal wealth to ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the founders Prince's opinions, beliefs and a variety of trusts continued this down aims against the years. The first president background of the company was Robert Wood Johnsonscientific evidence. NFL fans will be aware There are few instances of his great grandson, Robert Wood Johnson IV (known as 'Woody'), owner of the New York Jets. In between the two - beliefs being vindicated and afterwards - there are a string his relentless promotion of tragedies and scandals treatments which put you in mind of the Kennedy dynasty.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0312662114</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=America's Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt|author=John L Williams|rating=4|genre=Entertainment|summary=Two quotes on the back of the dust jacket testify have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the power and public perception reputation of Eartha Kitt during her lifetime. Orson Welles once called her ‘the most exciting woman in the world’, while to the CIA she was ‘a sadistic nymphomaniac’.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857385755</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Inferno Decoded: The essential companion to the myths, mysteries and locations a man who is proud of Dan Brown's Inferno|author=Michael Haag|rating=4|genre=Entertainment|summary=Here be spoilers. Not so much in my review, but certainly in its subject, a very quickly produced companion guide his refusal to the latest [[:Category:Dan Brown|Dan Brown]] blockbuster. It's not so much a page-byapply evidence-page guidebased, but certainly serves as an educational and intelligent look at the background logical reasoning to the biggest-selling book of 2013his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251800</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1739805100|title=Serving VictoriaLoving the Enemy: Life Building bridges in the Royal Householda time of war|author=Kate HubbardAndrew March

|summary=Biographies old and new ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of Queen Victoriaauthor Andrew March's grandparents, her husband and her children are plentiful enough. The vast majority who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the early days of them are based to some extent on the diariesNazi regime in the 1930s. Fred, memoirs a sensitive and biographies of thoughtful man, had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the most important figures who served her, and Kate Hubbard has put these as well as supplementary archive papers to good use growing hostilities between nations unfolding in presenting a thoroughly engrossing account of Europe at the royal household throughout the Queen’s lengthy reigntime. I might almost say ‘lively’, though Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that could be an exaggeration. The court of Victoria may have been homely after lasted for a fashion, but for the most part it was hardly livelylifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532239</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert SellersWill Brooker|title=What Fresh Lunacy is This?: The Authorised Biography of Oliver ReedTruth About Lisa Jewell

|summary=For rather more Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of his career than hethe most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, his family and closest friends might one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have likedread. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the name Oliver Reed was a byword for booze, brawls two closer and all types of laddish behaviourcloser together. As Sellers’ very full and remarkably objective biography revealsThe meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a funny yet sad life all get-up never commonly worn at oncethe author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. For although Brooker decides he repeatedly played up 'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the image published author's life, working to make a success of the lovable rogue which he had createdlatest title, underneath and struggling with the bad boy of popular legend he was at heart a professional actor who could always deliver a first-rate performance on next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the film set when requiredresult.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>147210112X</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neal ThompsonMartha Leigh|title=Invisible Ink: A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not' Ripley Family Memoir|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=Robert LeRoy Ripley was indeed Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a curious manchildhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. He throve Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on curiosity, his own and that of everyone else. By exploiting and never underestimating the public demand for trivia, and by being in the right place at the right time just typewriter as he edits the news and broadcasting media were beginning to develop in America into the unassailable forces they were by the end complete correspondence of the centuryphilosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he became one of his life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the most successful men practicalities of life. There is love in the agehouse but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847947204</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hermione LeePolly Barton|title=Edith WhartonFifty Sounds|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=A prolific authorWhere do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, Edith Whartonwith the question ''Why Japan?''s published output included over twenty novels, one Japan has been on my radar for a Pulitzer Prize winner, while and 85 short storiesif the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, as well as poetry and books on interior design and travelbut I am not hopeful. Born And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the United States question in 1862the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she travelled extensively throughout Europedescribes as being, and settled permanently in France among other things, the sound of ''every party where she died in 1937you have to introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845952014</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sylvie SimmonsFrederic Gros|title=I'm Your Man: The Life A Philosophy of Leonard CohenWalking|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=If you or I wanted confess I picked this one up from the library in my pre-lockdown forage of random stuff. Now I have to write a story about go out an imaginary figure who began as a novelist and poet, then became acclaimed as a singer-songwriter in buy my own copy so that I can turn down the swinging sixties, made and lost a fortune, became a monk, pages I have marked and returned return to a musical career at an age its varying wisdom when most mortals are well into retirement, and found himself not only more popular than ever but also playing I need to the largest audiences . Some books draw you in his entire life, it would be dismissed as total fantasyslowly. Nobody could make it up – and nobody needs to, because This one had me in a nutshell that is the life (so far) of Leonard Cohenfirst two pages, the subject of this biography and surely one of the music business’s most unique figureswherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099549328</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=J C KannemeyerSharon Blackie|title=J.M. Coetzee: A life in writingIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee is described as probably the most celebrated and decorated writer throughout the English-speaking worldI normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. The author Perhaps an even greater measure of sixteen published novels, he has been awarded impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Booker Prize twiceone I've borrowed. At the same time he has guarded his privacy jealously, tending I want to decline interviews and requests to discuss his work, and refusing to collect prestigious awards in person. On one occasion he explained his absence by saying that he could not imagine avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'anything better calculated to reduce me to miserylife-changing'. One acquaintance claims to have attended several dinner parties at which – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the author was third – but clichés exist for a fellow guest reason and did I'm not utter a single wordsure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1922070084</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Vladimir Alexandrov0241446732|title=The Black RussianOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Until I read this book I had never come across The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the story parenting of Frederick Bruce Thomastheir two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, 'the Black Russian'Beata, then nine years old, beforestruggled with what was happening. It is In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a remarkable tale of rags solution close to richeshome, tragedybut eventually, success against it became clear to the odds and subsequent failurefamily that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781855196</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Moore0648684806|title=NijinskyClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=4.5

|summary=The name Nijinsky is synonymous path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with dance from her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the last days of imperial Russiaonly child in the household and her childhood was glorious. I must confess to knowing little about him until I read thisBy contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the first biography mid-west of him the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for nearly forty fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and for me it Wisconsin was a surprise to learn that his career was so tragically briefrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686180</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami1789017977|title=The Trials of Radclyffe HallRonnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=It is a coincidence that the year 1928 saw Ronnie Williams was the first appearance son of two English novels which were denounced Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and initially suppressed on the grounds of obscenity and their potential to corrupt innocent readers – DEthel Wall.H. Lawrence’s 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' and Radclyffe Hall There's 'The Well of Loneliness'. Lawrencesome doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many novels, stories years older than Ethel and poems are widely read todayhe might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while, the family was quite well-to-do but Hall disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and her works are hardly remembered except by five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a minorityvery different lifestyle. Diana Souhami has done her a service in One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this generous yet deeply probing would stay with him throughout his life of a literary trailblazer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878788</amazonuk> He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diana SouhamiPatti Smith|title=Greta and CecilYear of the Monkey

|summary=The story On the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the notoriously reclusive film star from Sweden and lunar year of the noted British photographer is a curious monkey - one. Neither ever married, both were androgynous and bisexualpacked with mischief, plucked their eyebrowssorrow, and had numerous short-term relationshipsunexpected moments. They were like chalk and cheese; Beaton was In a compulsive writer and diariststranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, while Garbo was reluctant to pick up a pen even to sign her own nameit's the year of the monkey''. He adored parties, publicity, dressing up in frocks and photographing himself or posing for others behind As Smith wanders the lens (he couldn’t look more feminine in two pictures coast of him Santa Cruz in frocks by Dorothy Wilding from 1925 if he tried)solitude, while she was very much an early bed at night personreflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, preferred to wear unfussy men’s clothes, and was reluctant to be photographed at all if she could help as it. It is significant that the one picture of them together in the book, taken shifting political waters in London in 1951, shows her deliberately hiding her face behind what looks like a handbagAmerica.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780878869</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami1912242052|title=Natalie and RomaineO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson

|genre=BiographyArt|summary=The main focus of ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the book is first person to walk the relationship between Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooksmountains alone, two very well-off American lesbians who first met in Paris when the former was 39 and the latter 41. It was the beginning of an often mercurial partnership which lasted not because he had to for fifty years. Howeverwork, as a miner, quarryman, despite the author’s insistenceshepherd or pack-horse driver, it is less a double biography than a survey of the Sapphic society life which centred on Paris but because he wanted to for much of this periodpleasure and adventure. BarneyHis rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, a poetand its literary consequences, was a flamboyant character who used to say that 'living was the first changed our view of all the artsworld'' and often vowed to make .}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Graff_Find|title=Find Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=3.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=When Ben Graff'my life itself into s grandfather Martin handed him a poemplastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, he didn't take much notice of it. Brooks, a painter whose self-portrait adorns At the front coverage of 24, was Graff didn't realise the product gravity of a difficult childhood, abused by her mother who far preferred her mentally unbalanced brother, often proclaimed sadly that 'my dead mother stands between me and life'. An aloof soul, she made a brief marriage with the homosexual John Ellingham Brooks but left him within a yearpages he was holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878826</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Wright1789016304|title=CirculationWar and Love: William HarveyA family's Revolutionary Ideatestament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary='Circulation' Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by Thomas Wright is a biography of English physician William Harvey’s lifewhat she discovered, and the story of the particularly in 'birth of a theory'. It takes the reader through time before, during and after the creation and completion The Diary of Ann Frank''De Motu Cordisbut then realised that her own family'', in which Harvey famously outlines the most comprehensive antecedent of the mechanism of blood circulation as we know it todays stories were equally fascinating. The combination of the writer's aptitude for storytelling A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the intriguing life of city during the individual about whom he writes makes for a fascinating readwar years, allowing one but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to course through chronologically arranged chapters on Harvey’s life and works, mixed happen in a country with briefer essays on subject matters ranging from the history of vivisection liberal values who were resistant to the philosophical underpinnings of Harvey’s workGerman occupation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552698</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Morrison|title=The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=This book is a biography of and based largely on Most people believed that the letters of Lina Prokofiev. Born Carlina Codina in Madrid in 1897, she spent most of her childhood in New York. After making her stage debut as a soprano in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’ under occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the name of Lina Llubera, she met Germans might reach the Soviet composer and pianist Serge Prokofievcity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, best remembered for that the children’s musical fable ‘Peter and the Wolf’. They married Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in 1924 and for the first thirteen years of their marriage they lived in Parisway that it did, where two sons, Oleg and Svyatoslav, were born to thembut initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. Soon after moving to Moscow in 1936 their marriage fell apart. In 1941 he left her for It's an atrocity on a writer, Mira Mendelson, 24 years his junior, whom he married six years latervast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557313</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev1786893452|title=Giants: The Dwarfs of Auschwitz: The Extraordinary Story of the Lilliput TroupeUngrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=The title of this book does of course carry a sense of ironyHere in the West, although we never quite know exactly how much. When see news reports about immigrants on a man of diminutive stature was born in rural Romania in the 1860s nobody was to know what would happen to his lineage regular basis – there was no clue then that he would father ten childrensome media welcoming them, and seven of some scaremongering about them would inherit his genetic dwarfism. But history has pieced together all that followedof those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, including no matter how deep the careers those children had as a performance troupeinvestigative journalism they carry out, belting out showtunes outsiders to their own accompaniment, the world and acting the situations that refugees find themselves in their own tragi-comic skits. And then having It's rare that we find out the limelight stolen journeys from them by the Nazis, refugees themselves – and this is a transportation rare opportunity to Auschwitz. And then being surprisingly saveddo that, and given what passed as a cushty lifein this intelligent, fed powerful and together, but tortured at moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the hands middle of the camp doctora revolution in Iran, avidly researching anything he thought might shed clues on what singled out his Aryan race's genetic destiny. I say the amount of irony is unknown because we are not told exactly how short these little characters are – but he, the doctor, would have known. As one of the more ominous sentences you'll read all fleeing to America as a ten-year has it – 'Mengele had plans for them'-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849544646</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd0857058320|title=Wilkie CollinsLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=While Peter Ackroyd has published some extremely long books over ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the last few years, he has also been responsible author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for some commendably concise volumes as wellthe meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. This life of the Victorian novelist Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is one of the latter, figure who looms large over the latest in book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his series uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the centre of 'Brief Lives', which have also included Chaucer, this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the painter Turner and [[Poe by Peter Ackroyd|Edgar Allan Poe]]wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287471</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gary Raymond1788037812|title=3-Minute JRR TolkienThe Fraternity of the Estranged: A Visual Biography of The World's Most Revered Fantasy WriterFight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=45

|summary=When something with such a built-Originally passed in cult base as Tolkien books have gets transported into another medium1885, the manically interested fans have two reactions – to initially scoff at how nothing could compare with the originallaw that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and then to try and buy everything worthwhile with even a tenuous link to 1908, three books on the object nature of their affectionshomosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, while avoiding the mountain of crud that could deluge as well as the unwaryheterosexual Havelock Ellis. Such it will be until Exploring the third movie part margins of ''The Hobbit'' is safely behind us, society and studying homosexuality was common on the six-filmEuropean Continent, three-month long Blu-Ray box set is on but barely talked about in the shelves. Tolkien enthusiasts of course have a precarious situation – so great do they rightly hold the originalsUK, and so low can the quality publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the spin-offs bescientific understanding of homosexuality, there are some who will never be satisfied. But there remains and beginning the newcomerstruggle for recognition and equality, freshly inspired leading to find out more, and those at least will certainly be able to enjoy this beginner's guide to [[:Category:J R R Tolkien|J R R Tolkien]]the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908005831</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John FisherBuckland_Zoo|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!'The Man Who Ate the Zoo: A Life in Jokes and Pictures|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=I grew up watching Tommy CooperFrank Buckland, and watching my dad do impressions forgotten hero of Tommy Cooper. I thought he was hilarious (the real Tommy!) and loved his expressions as he repeatedly tried and failed to do magic tricks! This book is rather unusual as although it is a biography of sorts, giving information about Tommy's life and his natural history in the world of entertainment, it isn't text heavy, and so mostly Tommy's story is told through photographs and pictures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Unwin (editor)|title=Newcomers' Lives: The Story of Immigrants as Told in Obituaries from The TimesRichard Girling

|summary=I think I As a conservationist in Victorian England before the term existed, Frank Buckland was not the only person who at first glance found the title very much a man ahead of his time. Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and sub-title slightly misleading. For me it conjured eccentric sums him up visions of those who came across on the ‘Windrush’ in 1948 and the life they led on settling in Britain – perfectly, and, perhaps, the lives of the more famous (assuming there were some) in obituary formany biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441159177</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Artemis CooperWilliams_Captain|title=Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The sub-title of this biography is highly appropriate, for the ninety-six years of Patrick Leigh Fermor were packed with adventure. Born in 1915, he was something Captain Ronald Campbell of a maverick at schoolBombala Station, intellectually gifted but perpetually naughty, and his punishments for various refractions included suspensions and even expulsions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719554497</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Selina Guinness|title=The Crocodile by the DoorCambalong: The Story of a House, a Farm His Military Life and a Family|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Selina Guinness lived at Tibradden as a child and in 2002 she and her husband-to-be, Colin Graham, moved back to the house when her elderly uncle Charles became frail. The surname might lead you to suspect that there were brewery millions in the background but this wasn't the case. The couple were young academics and doing what needed to be done at Tibradden would need to be done in addition to full-time jobs. The house was on the outskirts of Dublin - 'derelict fields' if you were a property developer or the last defence against the encroaching city if you were not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844881571</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewTimes|author=Harry Ricketts|title=Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great WarIvor George Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=The majority In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of recent books on the War Poets tend to focus troops and convicts on their lives during and immediately after the conflict. This enterprising account, borrowing its name board a ship sailing from the poem by Wilfred OwenPlymouth to Sydney, takes a different approach in spanning a full fifty years or more. It begins with the first meeting of Siegfried Sassoon Australia: his wife and Rupert Brooke at one of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914young son accompanied him. Marsh He was not destined to live a tireless supporter of modern painters and after that promising new writerslong life, particularly poets. The journey, or rather account dying suddenly at the age of meetings34 at Bangalore, takes us leaving his widow to the western front and back raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to Englandmanage, culminating in a reunion of two of but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the longest-lived, Sassoon and David Jones, in 1964land. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon CallowPeacock_mountain|title=Charles Laughton: Into The Mountain, A Difficult ActorLife of Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=Once a towering presence on stage Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and screenso many books… I can understand the approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the star of fifty films myriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while, like most other people I have my favourite genres, and forty playsfavoured authors, Charles Laughton seems largely forgotten these days. As an actor of a younger generation and keen admirer of his workwhile, Callow is well placed to bring him back to like most other people I read the fore. He notes in his preface that the man has increasingly slipped out of public consciousnessreviews and follow up on what appeals, and even within his own profession he is virtually unknown I also have a third-string to anybody under the age of forty|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581957</amazonuk>my reading bow: randomness.

{{newreview|author=John Sugden|title=Nelson: A Dream of Glory|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=I will admit that I didn't know what I was letting myself in for when I saw 'Nelson: A Dream of Glory' sitting Move on the Bookbag shelf, but I had just come back from Portsmouth and a wander around on the Victory, so it was a bit hard to resist. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951913</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kate Chisholm|title=Wits and Wives: Dr Johnson in the Company of Women|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=What's your mental image of a Great Writer? Most people would probably say the same thing: someone sitting in splendid isolation, probably in a garret, writing Great Words and hating them. The idea of Great Writers having friends, or even a family, is a bizarre one. Partly this is because most Great Writers were incredibly weird people. But there's another issue at play. We're simply not used to imagining them in context, just one small part of a large and busy world. Our notion of biography is an incredibly fragmented one: despite the fact that one of the best indications of someone's character is how they interact with other human beings, we expect biographers to essentially confine themselves to the person and their literary output.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951867</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances A Gerard|title=Anna Amalia, Grand Duchess: Patron of Goethe and Schiller|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Anna Amalia of Brunswick, a Duchess of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach in the eighteenth century, is scarcely little more than a footnote in European royal history these days. Nevertheless it was mainly through her patronage that the court of Weimar became one of the most artistically renowned of the time, a reputation it never lost throughout the increasingly militaristic times that Germany went through from the age of Bismarck [[Newest Business and beyond.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781550166</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]