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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Laura CummingClaire Dederer|title= The Vanishing Man - In Search of VelazquezMonsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?|rating=53|genre=ArtPolitics and Society|summary=Pitching up at an auction and picking up Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a lost masterpiece for ''biography of the audience'' in a pittance is deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the dream for most art lovers. That seemingly happy circumstance happened to bookseller John Snare at a sale from the artist in 1845 and is the centrepiece to Laura Cummingcontext of contemporary ''cancel culture's excellent '. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The Vanishing Man – reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In Pursuit particular, the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model of Velazquez''monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voice. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587041</amazonuk>1399715070

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=G A Jones1788360702|title=Charles, The Cruise of NaromisAlternative Prince: August in the Baltic 1939An Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst

|genre=TravelBiography|summary=There's braveFor over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and there is bravecomplementary therapies. I may well have been born in a coastal county but certainly would baulk at ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the idea of setting out to sea with four colleagues in a 37Prince'-long boat. Boats to me are like planes – the bigger the betters opinions, beliefs and aims against the background of the safer I feel as a resultscientific evidence. But luckily for the purpose There are few instances of this book, George Jones was born with a much different pair his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of sea-legs to mine, and took treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the waters reputation of the English Channel, the North Sea and beyond in ''Naromis'' with brio. But – and this a man who is where the further definition proud of bravery comes in – he did it in August 1939his refusal to apply evidence-based, knowing full well that he would be sailing full tilt into the teeth of warlogical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1899262334</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Julian Palacios1739805100|title= Syd Barrett & Pink FloydLoving the Enemy: Dark GlobeBuilding bridges in a time of war|author=Andrew March|rating= 4.5|genre= EntertainmentBiography|summary= There were few sadder casualties ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the early days of the sixties music scene than Syd (real name Roger) BarrettNazi regime in the 1930s. The original songwriting genius Fred, a sensitive and front thoughtful man , had some vague ideas of Pink Floyd, he burnt out all too soon. A few months "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the spotlight were followed all too soon by a pathetic postscript of a stuttering solo career, time. Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and over three decades as connections that lasted for a largely housebound recluselifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859655482</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Keggie CarewWill Brooker|title=Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted TerritoryThe Truth About Lisa Jewell

|summary=Keggie Carew is Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the second child of a most unorthodox fathersuccessful British authors I've never knowingly read. On Now meet Will Brooker, one of the one hand he's a left-handed stutterer with little to recommend him other than that he was a law unto himself and a complete maverickthousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. But - born in 1919, This book starts with the second world war found him being tested for SOEtwo meeting each other, Churchill's secret army, who were tasked with conducting espionageas well, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe shows how 2021 drew the two closer and later in South East Asiacloser together. Within a matter The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of months he would be parachuted into occupied France with her anecdote about cup cakes, the aim words of supporting resistance groups ahead of the allied invasion of occupied France her latest book she was reciting, and carrying the rank of major - at the age of just 24. Later, her being in South East Asia he would be known as a 'Lawrence of Burma' and worked black lace mini-dress with Aung San, the head of the Burma Defence Army gold brocade'' (and father of Aung San Suu Kyi)and was certainly a get-up never commonly worn at one stage ''plucked off the Irrawaddy by a flying boat, like James Bond''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178470315X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Donald Naismith|title=A Bradford Apprenticeship|rating=4|genre=Politics and Society|summary=with all schools removed from their control and established as freestanding and self-governing academies. In effect this would (and possibly willevents I get to attend) mean that what was once a national service, locally administered will become but pulled Brooker, a local serviceprofessor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, nationally administered. Donald Naismith is perhaps best known as down the former Chief Education Officer of Richmondrabbit-upon-Thames, Croydon and then Wandsworth but his education and formative working years took place in his adopted home city of Bradfordhole that is Jewell's diverse output. In Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author'A Bradford Apprenticeship'' he gives us an affectionate tribute s life, working to make a success of the city which made him what he is latest title, and his thoughts on struggling with the education systemnext in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. Bradford was once one of And this is the country's leading education authorities and he values the opportunities it gave him to fine tune his thinkingresult.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1524636118</amazonuk>1529136024

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= John Ashdown-HillMartha Leigh|title= The Private Life of Edward IVInvisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating= 4.5

|summary= Edward IV is currently Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a popular subject for biographersslightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. All credit Her father is therefore due to Dr Ashdown-Hilla Cambridge don, one forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the foremost of current Yorkistphilosopher Jean-era historiansJacques Rousseau, for looking at the King from a fresh angle – that of his romantic involvements.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445652455</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Anja Reich-Osang and Imogen Taylor (translator)|title=The Scholl Case|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=I think I'd like Ludwigsfelde. I wouldn't have liked it when it was an industrial village, with one or two huge mechanical plants and nothing else to its name. But now, even with the constant hum of the autobahn (one of Hitlerlife's) keeping it company, it must have an appealwork. It has been rebuilt, refashioned and remodelled since the end of East Germany, under the most prosperous and forward-looking mayor in the state, if not the country. He it was Her mother is a concert pianist who put in a mostly-nude swimming spa. It has dispensers practises for doggy poo bags, so there's nothing as uncouth as taking your ownhours every day. The mayor, bless him, even expanded Neither parent is hugely interested in the motorway to three lanes in each directionpracticalities of life. It There is within touch of Berlin, and love in tune with so many business wants, yet the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is surrounded by woodlandthere. Woodland where, between Christmas and New Year a few years back, the mayor's own wife and dog were found, both having been strangled…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925240932</amazonuk>1800460384

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=S D TuckerPolly Barton|title=Great British EccentricsFifty Sounds

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary= Some very strange people Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have stalked our green and pleasant landvisited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. In his introductionAnd like Barton, Tucker asks us I don't know the answer to the question ''why. Is it our status as an island people which has made so many Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of our countrymen turn the question in the first essay, which is on ourselves? Has our long libertarian tradition of the idea of individual freedomsound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, as long as we do nobody else any harmamong other things, permitted weirdness the sound of ''every party where you have to flourish among us?introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1445660326</amazonuk>1913097501

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Karen JenningsFrederic Gros|title= Travels With My FatherA Philosophy of Walking|rating= 45|genre= General Fiction Politics and Society|summary= Despite the coda, I confess I picked this does not feel like ''an autobiographical novel''. I am not sure why Jennings felt one up from the need to couch it library in those terms unless there is much in the structure that is fictionmy pre-lockdown forage of random stuff. Now I'm hoping there isn't. I am hoping that the fiction is purely that conceit that this pretends have to be a novel. If go out an buy my own copy so that was necessary to get it published, then I'll applaud can turn down the subterfuge, because this is writing that needs pages I have marked and return to be read. It is – if as true as its varying wisdom when I want it need to be – a delicate reminiscence: a daughter's ''. Some books draw you in memoriam'' to a father she loved, worshipped, idealised, cared-for, lived with, and yes (in true daughterly fashion) at times, hatedslowly. A father who was, thereforeThis one had me in the first two pages, wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a good dadsport''. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907320695</amazonuk>1781688370

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John Van der KisteSharon Blackie|title=Pop Pickers and Music Vendors: David Jacobs, Alan Freeman, John Peel, Tommy Vance and Roger ScottIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=4.5|genre=EntertainmentBiography|summary=You know those questions I normally say that you get in celebrity interviews - 'which extinct being would you most like can tell how much a book means to see brought back me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to life?buy my own copy before I' Well, ve finished reading the one I'd like to see Jimmy Savile brought back, so that he could get his comeuppanceve borrowed. ItI want to avoid clichés like 'powerful's not just the damage he did to children and young people, dreadful as that was 'inspiring' 'life- changing' – although it's is definitely the shadow he cast over first two and only time will tell about the entertainment industry. We know that he wasn't alone in what he did, third – but somehow there's clichés exist for a whole era of entertainment which has been tarred by the same brush. John Van der Kiste has turned the spotlight away from Savile reason and on to five of the great DJs of the music industryI'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781555443</amazonuk>1912836017

{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0241446732|title=Tales Our House is on Fire: Scenes of Loving a Family and Leavinga Planet in Crisis|author=Gaby WeinerMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=In ''Tales The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of Loving and Leaving'', author Gaby Weiner tells the story of three parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her family members: her grandmothersister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, Amalia Moszkowicz Dinger; her motherit's natural to seek a solution close to home, Steffi Dinger; and her fatherbut eventually, Uszer Frochtit became clear to the family 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>1524635081</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Lewis0648684806|title=Henry IIIClara Colby: The Son of Magna CartaInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=4.5

|summary= For a monarch whose reign over England The path of fiftyClara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-six years -old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with 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 unequalled until the nineteenth centuryonly child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, Henry III remains curiously littleher family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-known. Nobody could claim that he west of the United States and life was a particularly outstanding or successful rulerhard, but as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the fact that he held his throne family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for so fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long in an unstable age after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was no mean achievement in itselfa rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445653575</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amy Licence1789017977|title=Catherine of AragonRonnie and Hilda's Romance: An Intimate Towards a New Life of Henry VIII's True Wifeafter World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=54|genre=BiographyHistory|summary= Catherine of Aragon, Ronnie Williams was the first son of Thomas Henry VIIIWilliams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's six wives some 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 years older than Ethel and Queenshe might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while, the family was arguably quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the most unhappy figure during the Tudor era who 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did not meet her end on inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the scaffold or army at the stake. The cliché 'tragic love story' must be a fitting one eighteen in her case1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445656701</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven BurgauerPatti Smith|title=The Road To War: Duty & Drill, Courage & CaptureYear of the Monkey

|summary=After World War II Bill Frodsham led an everyday lifeOn the coast of Santa Cruz, raising a family in an ordinary US suburb. He, his wife and children became friends Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with the Burgauer familymischief, little Steven Burgauer knowing him as Mr F. Time rolls on and little Steven grows upsorrow, and then eventually retires from the American financial sector to write science fiction and lecture from time to timeunexpected moments. HeIn a stranger's therefore surprised whenwords, out of the blue''Anything is possible: after all, Mr Fit's daughter tracks him down and presents him with a pile the year of handwritten notes asking Steven to make them into a book. These are Mr Fthe monkey''s self-authored memoirs, stretching from his youth onwards and showing that this seemingly good, kind but unremarkable man was anything but unremarkable. During As Smith wanders the war Mr F trained for the impossible and then lived it as he led men across Omaha Beach coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on D Day. He was then captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW year that brings huge shifts in inhumane conditions. Steven accepted the request her life - loss and ''The Road to War'' is ageing are faced head-on, as it the result: the life and war of Captain William C Frodsham Jrshifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1450218806</amazonuk>1526614758

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Sofka Zinovieff1912242052|title= The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and MeO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating= 4.53|genre= BiographyArt|summary= Faringdon House in Oxfordshire was the home of Lord Berners; composer, writer, painter, friend of Stravinsky and Gertrude Stein, and a man renowned ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for both his eccentricity and his homosexuality. Turning Faringdon into an aesthetebeing 's paradise, exquisite food was served to many of the great minds and beauties of the day. Since the early 1930's, his companion there was Robert Heber-Percy, twenty-eight years his junior, wildly physical and unscholarly, a hothead who rode naked through the grounds and was known first person to all as walk the Mad Boy. If those two sounded an odd couplemountains alone, especially at a time when homosexuality was illegal, the addition of Jennifer Fry not because he had to the household in 1942for work, as a pregnant high society girl who became Robert's wifeminer, quarryman, was really rather astounding. After the child was bornshepherd or pack-horse driver, the marriage soon founderedbut because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. Berners died in 1950 His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and Robert was left in charge its literary consequences, changed our view of Faringdon, ably assisted by a ferocious Austrian housekeeper. This mad the world was the one first encountered by author Sofka Zinovieff, Robert's granddaughter'. A typical child of the sixties, it was much to her astonishment that Robert decided to leave the house to her. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>009957196X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor GreiveGraff_Find|title=Penguin Bloom: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a FamilyFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=3.5|genre=Biography Autobiography|summary=Cameron and When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his wifejournal, Sam, had been leading a very active, adventurous lifehe didn't take much notice of it. Even after At the birth age of their three sons they wanted to continue their adventures24, so they decided to travel to Thailand for a family holiday. They were having a brilliant time until, suddenly, Sam was involved in a dreadful, almost fatal, accident. The accident left her paralysed and, because Graff didn't realise the gravity of the sudden and extremely severe impact on her life she slid quickly into a very deep and dark depression. Cameron feared for his family's future, and his wife's life, until one day a small abandoned magpie chick came along, and managed to change everythingpages he was holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782119795</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Simon Callow1789016304|title=Orson Welles, Volume 3War and Love: One-Man Band|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary= Orson Welles, the noted actor, director and producer, was one A family's testament of those larger than life characters whose impact on the world of stage and screen during his lifetime was inestimable. Simon Callow has found the task of condensing his story into a single volume is impossibleanguish, endurance and this is the third of three solid instalments.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099502836</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewdevotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Graeme Thomson|title= George Harrison: Behind the Locked DoorMelanie Martin

|summary= George Harrison was the youngest of the four wartime-born youngsters who came together Melanie Martin read about what happened to form The Beatles. He Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was also the only one who came from a relatively stable family background, his early years not scarred entranced by the loss of one parent through divorce or early bereavement. With two elder brothers and a sisterwhat she discovered, he was the baby of the Harrison clan. A poor scholar but a promising trainee electrician particularly in his teens, a musical ear and the advent ''The Diary of rockAnn Frank'n'roll soon led him along an alternative career pathbut then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. This is a finely balanced warts-A hundred and-all portrait of seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the manwar years, his life, character, songwriting but only five thousand survived and other interests, an often baffling figure, Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a strange mix of good and badcountry with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Thomson has dug deeply and spoken to several Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who knew him well and worked with him, and as a life of thought that the Germans might reach the 'Dark Horse', I doubt it could city were convinced that they would soon be bettered. Scrupulously researchedpushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it is easily the most comprehensive Harrison life I have come acrossdid, and but initial protests melted away as the most objectiveorganisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1468310658</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander Larman1786893452|title= Byron's WomenThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary= George Gordon, who became the 6th Lord Byron at the age of ten Here in 1798 on the death of his grandfatherWest, is remembered not only as one of the great poets of the Romantic erawe see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, but also as somebody whose severe lack of moral compass was guaranteed to attract scandal wherever he laid his hatsome scaremongering about them. This new book, as the title suggests, is not a biography But all of himthose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, rather an account of his life and those of nine of almost always, no matter how deep the women who were unfortunate enough investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to become involved with him. They include his mother, his abused wife, his half-sister with whom he slept as well, plus lovers the world and mistresses and his two daughtersthe situations that refugees find themselves in. Larman admits It's rare that there could have been several more we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – actressesand this is a rare opportunity to do that, servant womenin this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the middle of a revolution in fact almost anyone. For ByronicIran, maybe we should read 'insatiable'fleeing to America as a ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784082023</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Susan Higginbotham0857058320|title= Margaret Pole: The Countess in Lord Of All the TowerDead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary= The fate of Margaret Pole, who as ''Lord Of All the cover says has Dead'' is a good claim journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the title of meaning behind his great uncle's death in the last PlantagenetSpanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas'great uncle, was a sorry one. As a close relation of is the Yorkists and figure who looms large over the Tudors book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at a time of upheaval, her life was overshadowed by the executions centre of several of her family – and ultimately leading this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to her own, largely it seems, be a hero whilst having fought for the 'crime' of being who she waswrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445635941</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Barbara Fox1788037812|title= When The Fraternity of the War is Over|rating= 4|genre= Biography|summary=Gwenda and Douglas Brady were a brother and sister from Newcastle who were evacuated to the Lake District during the Second World War. ''When the War is Over'' tells Gwenda's story of evacuee life Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in the idyllic village of Bampton, where they spent several years living with a kindly schoolmaster and his wife. As they settled into village lifeEngland, Gwenda and Douglas found it harder and harder to come to terms with the idea that they would have to return home to their parents at some point.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751561398</amazonuk>}}{{newreview1891-1908|author=John Howlett|title= James Dean: Rebel LifeBrian Anderson|rating=45

|summary= James Dean was Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a sense to crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the 1950s what Sid Vicious margins of society and studying homosexuality was to common on the 1970s – European Continent, but barely talked about in the ultimate 'live fast, die young' characterUK, although as so the star publications of three classic movies these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the era he achieved rather more in his short life than struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the hapless punk icon ever did milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in his1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859655342</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sean CunninghamBuckland_Zoo|title=Prince Arthur: The Tudor King Man Who Never WasAte the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling

|summary= Prince Arthur was As a conservationist in Victorian England before the eldest son of Henry VII. Had he lived longerterm existed, there might have been no Henry VIII, thus paving the way for Frank Buckland was very much a very large counterfactual 'what if' in British historyman ahead of his time. The name ArthurSurgeon, that of the mythical King several centuries earliernaturalist, had great expectations attachedveterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, never and any biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to be fulfilledtell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445647664</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer RobertsWilliams_Captain|title=The Beauty Captain Ronald Campbell of Her AgeBombala Station, Cambalong: A Tale of Sex, Scandal His Military Life and Money in Victorian EnglandTimes|author=Ivor George Williams|rating=4.5

|summary= The name In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of Yolande Stephens (nee Duvernay) is not that well-known the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the annals of Victorian Englandtroops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, but behind it lies an enthralling rags-Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. He was not destined to-riches saga. How did live a young girl born into poverty in Paris become one of long life, dying suddenly at the most celebrated ballerinas age of her time 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in Englanda difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, and after that one of but she was also responsible for the richest women in convicts who worked the country, with a fortune on her death which rivalled that of Queen Victoria?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445653206</amazonuk>land. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter RexPeacock_mountain|title=William the Conqueror: Into The Bastard Mountain, A Life of NormandyNan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|genre=History Biography|summary= The basic facts of William Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I's life are inevitably as clouded as those surrounding can understand the Norman conquestapproach, the events and politics which led up to but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the aftermath. As Peter Rex makes clear in his introduction, any surviving sources are inevitably very incomplete. Moreover, 'the writing of the history of the eleventh century requires the historian to attempt to provide motives and explanations for events that are only sketchily described at best'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445660172</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Teresa Cole|title= Henry V: The Life of the Warrior King & the Battle of Agincourt|rating= 4.5|genre= Biography|summary= Henry V is remembered as one of England's greatest warrior kings, not least as a result of his immortalisation in the play by Shakespeare (myriad lesser-known authors short as well as by two film versions of the drama). Ironically he was one of several great-grandchildren of Edward IIISo while, and as he was considered relatively unimportant at the time of his birthlike most other people I have my favourite genres, exactly when he arrived in the world was not recorded and two different dates have been given. It was the deposition of his father's childless cousin Richard II in 1399 which placed him directly in the line of succession.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445655411</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Peter Ackroyd|title= Alfred Hitchcock|rating= 4|genre= Biography|summary= Peter Ackroyd has established a reputation for himself in recent years as the master of the pithy biography, particularly but not exclusively of those with a strong London connection. J.M.W. Turnerfavoured authors, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and Charlie Chaplin are among those who have come under his scrutinywhile, and now he looks at like most other people I read the noted film director reviews and producerfollow up on what appeals, the 'Master of Suspense'I also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287668</amazonuk>