Difference between revisions of "Newest Biography Reviews"

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[[Category:Biography|*]]
 
[[Category:Biography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
==Biography==
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{{Frontpage
__NOTOC__
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|author=Claire Dederer
{{newreview
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|title=Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?
|author=D R Thorpe
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|rating=3
|title=Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan
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|genre=Politics and Society
|rating=5
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|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography of the audience'' in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary ''cancel culture''. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In 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 ''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.
|genre=Biography
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|isbn=1399715070
|summary=The great-grandson of a crofter, and son-in-law of a Duke, Harold Macmillan was born in London in 1894. Despite the well-to-do aristocratic background, his years as a young adult were marked by bad experiences in the trenches which left him with lifelong war wounds, and his early service as a Conservative Member of Parliament by the plight of the unemployed in his first constituency of Stockton. He had much in common with another future Prime Minister, Winston Churchill; both had American mothers, and both were mavericks who were elected as Conservatives but refused to toe the party line too steadfastly.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844135411</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1788360702
|author=Robert Ross
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|title=Charles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography
|title=Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend
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|author=Edzard Ernst
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=Some years ago, I was given a Penguin edition of Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', with what looked like an uniquely fearsome face on the front cover.  A year or two later, I saw a photograph of Marty Feldman and was convinced he must have inspired it if not actually been the model.
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|summary=For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the background of the scientific evidence.  There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, logical reasoning to his ambitions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857683780</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Bettany Hughes
 
|title=The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still so relevant so long after his death, his life is something of a mystery. He didn't like to write things down, and so Hughes begins this book by saying that it may have something of a 'Socrates-sized hole' in it. What we do see is the city of Athens, and the hugely important changes which were going on there while Socrates was alive. In Athens we see the beginnings of democracy, the seedlings of some of the ideas that we take for granted today, such as freedom of speech, and the right to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development of modern values, and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinker, he was also a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating to be around.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554054</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1739805100
|author=Stacy Schiff
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|title=Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of war
|title=Cleopatra: A Life
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|author=Andrew March
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=Stacey Schiff's biography starts more of less from Cleopatra's infamous meeting with Caesar, where she sneaks into his rooms in a sack. This is one of the most popular images of Cleopatra in the public consciousness and Schiff happily refutes the image of her emerging as a well polished seductress, pointing out that anyone who had been carried in a sack for a considerable period of time will more likely be fairly dishevelled. Schiff takes us through from this moment up to Cleopatra's much dramatised death, and beyond, to the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
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|summary= ''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 Nazi regime in the 1930s. Fred, a sensitive and thoughtful man, had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the time. Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetime.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075353956X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Will Brooker
|author=Tina Brown
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|title=The Truth About Lisa Jewell
|title=The Diana Chronicles
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=''The Diana Chronicles'' was first published in 2007, ten years after Diana's untimely death (forgive me if I proffer information that you already know, but prior to reading this book, I was one of the small group of people in this country happily oblivious to the Princess Diana industry). The book has been re-released in shocking pink, white and gold livery, as a 'commemorative edition' to coincide with The Royal Wedding. A fanciful Foreword now imagines Diana's life and reaction to Will and Kate's marriage, had she survived.
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|summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read.  Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read.  This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. The 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 get-up never commonly worn at the 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. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with the next in lineJewell, due diligence appropriately done, agreesAnd this is the result.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099568357</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1529136024
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Frances Wilson
 
|title=How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=As I read 'How to Survive the Titanic' I was conscious that we're only a matter of months away from the centenary of the sinking – and a slew of media to mark the occasionGiven that the subject has been mined extensively over the years it will be interesting to see whether there's anything new to be said about the tragedyIt's a subject which has always fascinated me – and it was with a sense of anticipation that I opened the book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809222</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author= Martha Leigh
|author=Andrew Crowther
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|title= Invisible Ink: A Family Memoir
|title=Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan: His Life and Character
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|rating= 5
|rating=5
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|genre= Biography
|genre=Biography
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|summary= Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of life. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.
|summary=Gilbert and Sullivan were the Rice and Lloyd Webber of the late Victorian era. Some might regard their work as slightly dated these days, especially the satirical lyrics which were so much a product of their time, but their appeal has never really faded and it surely never will.
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|isbn=1800460384
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752455893</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Polly Barton
|author=D J Taylor
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|title=Fifty Sounds
|title=Thackeray
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
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|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Today, William Makepeace Thackeray is remembered almost exclusively as the writer of 'Vanity Fair', considered as among the greatest novels of its time.  Yet he was a prolific writer, also responsible for 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes', as well as several sketches, essays and much poetry.  However most of his work is largely forgotten today, while as a person he remains little known, and he has been somewhat overshadowed by his better-known contemporary, old friend and rival Charles Dickens, born one year later.  This biography does an excellent job in rescuing him from such semi-obscurity.
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|summary= 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 visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099563258</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1913097501
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lindsey Fraser
 
|title=J K Rowling: the Mystery of Fiction
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
 
|summary=Easily one of the most renowned authors of the 21st century, J.K. Rowling's incredibly successful Harry Potter series shook the core of the literary world. It provoked a reaction, the likes of which have never been seen before, and likely never will. A unique set of factors combined in order for the Harry Potter books to reach the level of success they enjoyed, and these factors are explored in this biography of Rowling.  It is difficult not to be fascinated by the person who is responsible for the phenomenon that is Harry Potter, and although writing is a profession that doesn't have a typical path by which it can be reached, Rowling's story is anything but orthodox, and her personal 'rags to riches' story only enhances the Harry Potter legacy.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906134693</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Frederic Gros
|author=Charlotte Frost
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|title=A Philosophy of Walking
|title=Sir William Knighton: The Strange Career of a Regency Physician
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Sir William Knighton came from humble beginnings: in later life the memories of his mother selling butter and eggs from a market stall would frequently be brought up and it was never to illustrate just how well he'd done.  The fact that he became a physician would normally be quite an achievement, but his baronetcy and fame didn't come from his work as a physician but from his less well-publicised work for George IV.  Although his work at court would span just over a decade it was far from being what he wanted to do – and for the most part it would not bring him a great deal of happiness. At the end of his career as a physician he simply wanted to retire to his cottage in the country - but found himself unable to desert a king who had become dependent on him.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755213017</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Rodney Bolt
 
|title=As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil: The Impossible Life of Mary Benson
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
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|genre= Politics and Society
|summary=Since I hadn't previously heard of Archbishop Benson, let alone his wife, I must commend the title, cover and advertising of this book. All of the above provided an accurate and irresistible glimpse of the biography within, and I wasn't one whit disappointed in my choice.
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|summary= I confess I picked this one up from the library in my pre-lockdown forage of random stuff. Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the pages I have marked and return to its varying wisdom when I need to.   Some books draw you in slowlyThis one had me in the first two pages, wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843548615</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1781688370
}}
 
 
 
{{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 MarxBut 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>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Sharon Blackie
|author=Manning Marable
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|title=If Women Rose Rooted
|title=Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
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|genre= Biography
|summary=People's preconceptions about Malcolm X are vast. This is no surprise given his dramatic life, untimely death, and subsequent increased fame through the likes of {{amazonurl|title=Spike Lee's 1992 film|isbn=B00005A7TO}}. {{amazonurl|title=His autobiography|isbn=0141185430}} is a must-read for anyone interested in his life, or the tumultuous race struggle in the US in the 1960s, but it must be viewed in context. It was completed after Malcolm X's death, by co-author Alex Haley, and many aspects were highlighted or played down, to suit Malcolm X's ends. Manning Marable's biography, years in the making, looks at his life with a new perspective.
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|summary= I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the one I've borrowed. I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for a reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0713998954</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1912836017
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Duncan Hamilton
 
|title=The Unreliable Life of Harry the Valet: The Great Victorian Jewel Thief
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=The story of Harry the Valet may not be particularly familiar to modern readers, but he was something of a celebrity in the Victorian age. He achieved notoriety by stealing thousands of pounds worth of jewels from the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland - much to the delight of many people who disliked the lady, which appears to have been pretty much everyone who ever met her. Having pulled off this audacious theft, Harry seemed to be invincible - but he was brought down by his love for a Gaiety Girl, and ended up facing a trial which the papers fell over themselves to report on.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846058139</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Fetish Room
 
|author=Redmond O'Hanlon and Rudi Rotthier
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=An ongoing debate in our family has centred on the value of biographies, particularly of writers. I've always loved the touchstone of the places people lived and wrote, the banality of their lives, the detail, the insight, and the fact that it can tell you everything or nothing at all about the work. My Dad held that the work was what mattered; the rest is just social history. He said that almost disparagingly, which is odd, because if you presented it as social history rather than biography, he'd lap it up. I guess I just don't make the distinction.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684145</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0241446732
|title=House of Exile: War, Love and Literature, from Berlin to Los Angeles
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|title=Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis
|author=Evelyn Juers
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|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
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|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kröger-Mann were in a constant state of hazardous exile after the rise of fascism in Germany in 1933. He became like Zola, his favourite author, a socially committed novelist and political activist and fierce critic of militarism. He was convivial, having a wide circle of friends that contained many creative artists, playwrights, socialists. He seemed drawn to the bohemians and the demi-monde. This elegant and sometimes formal gentleman came from the Hanseatic town of Lubeck where his father belonged to a renowned grain merchant family. These might be described as the haute-bourgeoisie. There was an unusual degree of sibling rivalry between him and his less robust brother, the famous author of ''The Magic Mountain'', Thomas Mann. Hendrick possessed a sensual nature and fell passionately and easily in love with a number of women. Of these his relationship with Nelly, a fascinating woman, a seamstress and nightclub hostess, as full of contradictions as himself, was the most successful and long lasting. She followed him on the long painful journey into exile at first in Nice and later to the United States.
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|summary=The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal.  Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, it 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>1846144612</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0648684806
|author=Simon Stephenson
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|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist
|title=Let Not The Waves of the Sea
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|author=John Holliday
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=The book opens after the catastrophic event and the narrator/author Simon is in the local area of Phi Phi.  He describes it in glowing terms (which may sound a little strange) as he aims, on a rather arduous climb, to be rewarded with a stunning viewAnd immediately I'm struck with Stephenson's lilting style of writing.  For example, ' ... an elderly lady carrying bags of rice over each shoulder as if they were no more than foam guesthouse pillows.'  How lovely and evocative is that, I'm thinking to myself.
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|summary=The 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 her parents and three brothersInstead, 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 only child in the household and her childhood was gloriousBy contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of 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 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 Wisconsin was a rude awakening.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848545584</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Philip Norman
 
|title=John Lennon: The Life
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=For part of my formative years, John Lennon was one of the four most famous people in the worldAll that we have learnt about him in the thirty years or so since his death has kept his name firmly in the public eye, if not always for the best of reasons.  At over 800 pages, this is one of the lengthiest biographies written about the extraordinary life and times of the former Beatle.  It's also surely one of the most impartial.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000719742X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Hilary Spurling
 
|title=Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Peal Buck, the 5th of 7 children, was born in 1892 to American missionary parents working in China, where she was then brought up. She learned Chinese before she learned English, and only realised that she was considered a foreigner when anti foreigner riots known to as the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 forced the family out of her childhood home. Later she became famous for her novels and short stories set in China, especially The Good Earth. She won America's most famous literary prize, the Pulitzer, in 1932, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Yet her work is mostly forgotten in the US and Europe, and in the country she loved, her books were banned by Mao's regime after they came to power in 1949.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1861978529</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1789017977
|author=Jeremy Lewis
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|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II
|title=Shades of Greene: One Generation of an English Family
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|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Graham Greene's father actually had six children, and his brother six of his own.  (Well, there were nine in their generation for a start...)  The surprising and joyous thing about this book is that it can show that Graham Greene's remarkable life is by no means the only standout in that whole generation of family history.  It can continuously throw up surprises - we know Hugh Greene was high up in the BBC, but it wasn't him who helped found Canadian public service broadcasting.  We are familiar with Graham himself traipsing around the world, reporting back in fact and fiction from unusual circumstances and exotic climes with dubious systems of government, but it wasn't he who was noted for being an ardently public supporter of pro-Communist China.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551888</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Benjamin Mandelkern
 
|title=Escape from the Nazis: The Incredible and Inspiring Saga of Two Young Jews on the Run in World War II Poland
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Do we all have it in us?  Would you as a Pole in 1940s Poland, who like as not had been 'educated' in the horrendous evil of Jews by your church - would you ignore Nazi death threats and countless opportunities for the wrong thing to be said, for the truth to be let out, for betrayal - would you help a Jewish life survive?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1550280554</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Richard Lucas
 
|title=Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
|summary=Take one personable failed actress, embittered by lack of success at home in the USA, and conspire to land her living in Germany as WW2 breaks outWhat chance her becoming an American, female Lord Haw-Haw, being paid by Germany to broadcast entertaining, dissuasive propaganda worldwide on shortwave radio? Anybody could guess it would take innumerable factors, circumstances and events, and they're all here in this entertaining, eye-opening and educational biography.
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|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall.  There's 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 he might well have shaved a few years off his ageFor a while, the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life.  He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1935149431</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Patti Smith
|author=Anthony James
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|title=Year of the Monkey
|title=The Happy Passion: A Personal View of Jacob Bronowski
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|rating=4
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Popular Science
 
|summary=Jacob Bronowski was a scientific administrator, poet, philosopher, dramatist, radio and TV personality, best remembered for the series 'The Ascent of Man'.  This short book, about 90 pages long, is partly biographical sketch, partly – in fact largely – an overview of his major published works, occupying about two-thirds of the book.  In the author's words, it is intended as a personal view of Bronowski as a philosopher.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845402200</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Patrick Lienhardt, Olivier Philipponnat and Euan Cameron
 
|title=The Life of Irene Nemirovsky
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 to a wealthy Jewish family.  Even as a child she was used to travel and regularly spent time in the South of France, but the family was forced to flee Russia when they were threatened by the revolution. They lived for a time in Finland and Stockholm, eventually settling in France.  Nemirovsky's father was something of a rough diamond and her mother selfish and unfaithful, vain and difficult – her mother, particularly would form the basis for several characters in Nemirovsky's books.
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|summary=On the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in America.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099523981</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526614758
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1912242052
|author=Giles Milton
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|title=O Joy for me!
|title=Wolfram: The Boy Who Went To War
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|author=Keir Davidson
|rating=4.5
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|rating=3
|genre=Biography
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|genre=Art
|summary=Giles Milton's daughter was set the task of designing an heraldic shield which represented the most important elements of her family's history. Aware that one of her grandparents is German she included the only German symbol which she knew: a Swastika. It was this incident, which was an awkward mixture of funny and disquieting which brought about 'Wolfram: The Boy Who Went To War'.  It's the story of Giles' father-in-law, Wolfram Aïchele, who was nine years old when Hitler came to power and who found himself caught up in a situation which was none of his making and didn't accord with his own beliefs.  He was a man who wanted to be a sculptor or to paint, but he was forced to become a soldier.
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|summary=''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure.  His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340837888</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Graff_Find
|author=Dudley Green
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|title=Find Another Place
|title=Patrick Bronte: Father of Genius
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|author=Ben Graff
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=There have been many biographies about Charlotte Brontë and her siblings, but very little about their father.  It is tempting to speculate whether he would be quite so deserving of one if he had not been the father of such a famous family.  Yet Dudley Green, a retired Classics teacher, has demonstrated here that he did lead an interesting life himself.  Born in rural Ireland in 1777, he spent his early years there before arriving in England in 1802 and settled in Yorkshire seven years later, where he remained the rest of his days.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454455</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Donald Spoto
 
|title=Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
|genre=Entertainment
+
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Thanks to the memoir 'Mommie Dearest' by her adopted daughter Christina, the enduring image of movie star Joan Crawford is one of an alcoholic, sadistic monster.  Spoto clearly believes that this portrait is a gross exaggeration, and is at pains to rectify the balance.  Having previously written biographies of Alfred Hitchcock and Marilyn Monroe among others, he clearly knows the subject of cinema inside out, and has written a very thorough chronicle of Crawford's career.  The impression the reader is left with, however, is that in looking at her family life and art he has perhaps striven too far to present her as a person more sinned against than sinning, a legendary talent, beauty and above all a grossly maligned adoptive mother.
+
|summary=When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, he didn't take much notice of it. At the age of 24, Graff didn't realise the gravity of the pages he was holding.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091931274</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stephen Anderton
 
|title=Christopher Lloyd: His Life at Great Dixter
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=When I first had a garden I did what I always do with a new project: I turned to books to see what help I could find.  There were any number which told me how to do the basics and what I needed to know to make the right decisions.  It was rather like cooking only with a few more uncertainties thrown in.  Then there were the books which didn't really bother about the basics but provided limitless inspiration. At the head of these writers, if not way out in front, was Christopher Lloyd who gardened throughout his life at Great Dixter, producing colour combinations which stunned and probably one of the greatest gardens of the twentieth century.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950968</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
+
|isbn=1789016304
|title=Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet
+
|title=War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam
|rating=4
+
|author=Melanie Martin
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Fleeing your home can never be easy but when you are six, your only shoes are roughly hand-sewn and stuffed with hay, and your route is over the world's highest mountain range then it must be particularly challenging.  This was the journey that Yangzom Brauen's mother took with her parents when they fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion of 1959.  They were leaving behind all that they knew and travelling to India in the hope that they could find sanctuary in the country where the Dalai Lama was in exile.  'Across Many Mountains' is their story.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655344X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=John Ashdown-Hill
 
|title=The Last Days of Richard III
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=The controversy surrounding King Richard III has meant that there have been far more biographies about him than on any other pre-Tudor monarch, some extremely partisan in exonerating him of the crimes laid at his door, some (a minority, it seems) more than keen to endorse the Shakespearean portrait of a fiend in human shape, and others steering a middle course.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454048</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Edmund de Waal
 
|title=The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary='The Hare with Amber Eyes' vibrates with that rush of desire to uncover family history that often follows the death of someone you love.  It is also a meticulously researched book of wide ranging scope. When I first picked it up, it looked worryingly erudite, and I had visions of becoming lost in a sea of names, places and ideas.  So I was amazed to find myself reading it in one sitting, completely absorbed, and losing a whole day in the processEdmund De Waal had me hooked from the bottom of page one when he admits to kicking the gate of the Japanese language school he was attending in frustration at his lack of fluencyHe then thinks sheepishly: 'what it was to be twenty-eight and kicking a school gate.'  This funny, disarming comment put me on his side from the off.
+
|summary=Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupationMost people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspectIt's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539551</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1786893452
|author=Paul Spicer
+
|title=The Ungrateful Refugee
|title=The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice, Countess de Janze
+
|author=Dina Nayeri
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=Happy Valley in Kenya was an idyllic setting. The high altitude made for a benign climate and the farms were owned by colonial settlers who became the 'White Mischief' set of the nineteen forties.  They farmed their estates, partied the night away and extra-marital affairs were the norm. Author Paul Spicer's mother was loosely involved with the set and he uses the connection to good effect to tell the story of the life of Alice, Countess de Janzé – a beguiling and volatile woman who always thought more of her animals than of her children.
+
|summary=Here in the West, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to the world and the situations that refugees find themselves in. It's rare that we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the middle of a revolution in Iran, fleeing to America as a ten-year-old.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847399142</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0857058320
|author=Jonny Steinberg
+
|title=Lord Of All the Dead
|title=Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City
+
|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=South African Steinberg has won awards with previous non-fiction books and after reading the praise from various sources (New York Times, J M Coetzee) I came to the conclusion that I was in for a serious and thought-provoking read.
+
|summary=''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the 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 the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.
 
The preface tells us that the two Liberian men - Rufus and the younger Jacob left Liberian soil in vastly different circumstances and for different reasons. But as they meet up years later and thousands of miles away from their homeland, their ''Little Liberia'' in New York City has a tall order:  to contain and accommodate their big personalities and to a certain extent, their big egos. Can it cope?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224085662</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1788037812
|author=Edward Pearce
+
|title=The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908
|title=Pitt the Elder: Man of War
+
|author=Brian Anderson
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, and Prime Minister from 1766 to 1768, has come down to us through the ages as the great eighteenth century equivalent of Winston Churchill, one of the great men of the British Empire in its earlier days, and the man who led England triumphantly through the Seven Years War of 1756-63.  During the 'year of victories' in 1759, Quebec was captured, the combined English and Prussian forces defeated the French at Minden, and the army won a famous victory at Quiberon Bay.  For this, Pitt took – or was accorded by generations of historians – much of the credit.
+
|summary=Originally passed in 1885, the law 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 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 margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951433</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Buckland_Zoo
|author=Tracy Kidder
+
|title=The Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history
|title=Mountains Beyond Mountains
+
|author=Richard Girling
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=Dr Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to helping the poorest and neediest in society. He works tirelessly to help people less fortunate than him. ''Dedicated his life'' and ''works tirelessly'' - phrases we've heard many times about many wonderful people, but when reading ''Mountains Beyond Mountains'', you'll realise there's not a shred of hyperbole about these claims. Farmer began working with tuberculosis and AIDS patients in Haiti, and then worked with them, and worked for them, and worked with them, and worked for them, and worked with them. In an area where treating the disease is just one part of the problem, where poverty is rife, he has transformed an area, saved countless lives, and made an incredible difference to many people. [http://www.pih.org/ Partners In Health], the healthcare organisation he set up with his colleagues, takes this work worldwide.  
+
|summary=As a conservationist in Victorian England before the term existed, Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of his time. Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, and any biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684315</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Williams_Captain
|author=Molly Carr
+
|title=Captain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: His Military Life and Times
|title=In Search of Dr Watson - A Sherlockian Investigation
+
|author=Ivor George Williams
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=The old saying that behind every great man there is a great woman has one major exception - Sherlock Holmes. Behind him is the figure of Dr John Watson, his biographer, the man who shares his Baker St lodgings, and the man eternally flummoxed by his deductions. This biography successfully shows how the superior Holmes walked over Watson in investigative skills, and also how Conan Doyle needed Watson, if only to help us admire Holmes more by making him less insufferably smug.
+
|summary=In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. He was not destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at the age of 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the land. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685766</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Peacock_mountain
|author=Lindsay Reade
+
|title=Into The Mountain, A Life of Nan Shepherd
|title=Mr Manchester and the Factory Girl: The Story of Tony and Lindsay Wilson
+
|author=Charlotte Peacock
|rating=4
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=Mr Manchester, as Tony Wilson came to be known, could have been the next John Humphrys.  Instead he ended up becoming the next Malcolm McLaren – or, perhaps, a far less successful version of Richard Branson.  After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in English he became a trainee news reporter for ITN, and for much of his life he worked as an anchorman for regional evening news programmes.  Yet he is less remembered for this than for his championship of alternative music and punk rock, founding of Factory Records and involvement with the Hacienda Club.  Although he loved the Beatles and folk music in general, he disliked much of the contemporary music scene until he saw the Sex Pistols live in the summer of 1976.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654567</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Bevis Hillier
 
|title=The Wit and Wisdom of G K Chesterton
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|genre=Biography
|summary=G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), best known as the creator of the clerical detective Father Brown, seems to have slipped a little among the general reading public's estimation these days.  This is surely unmerited, for he was just as versatile as and hardly less quotable than the Victorian enfant terrible.
+
|summary=Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the myriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while, like most other people I have my favourite genres, and favoured authors, and while, like most other people I read the reviews and follow up on what appeals, I also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441179585</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Business and Finance Reviews]]
|author=Rosamund Bartlett
 
|title=Tolstoy: A Russian Life
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Count Lev Tolstoy came from a privileged family.  He was born on 28 August 1828; unfailingly superstitious for the rest of his days, he therefore adopted 28 as his lucky number.  Like most young men from a similar background, he joined the Russian army.  The Crimean war proved to be the making of him in that it developed his social conscience, opened his eyes to the conditions endured by those born to a less lofty position in the social order than himself, and impressed on him the fervent belief that everybody in Russia ought to have the chance to learn to read and write.  As a result he became a born-again repentant nobleman in the light of having seen how the other half (or more than half) lived, he took a long hard look at the world around him, turning into a rebel against organized religion and the authority of the state in the process.  All this was exacerbated by his travels throughout Europe shortly afterwards, in which he was impressed with the comparative freedom he saw in other countries and then found the return to his homeland thoroughly depressing in the few years before the emancipation of the serfs.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681383</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Valerie Benaim and Yves Azeroual
 
|title=Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni: The True Story
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=In November 2007 the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy was newly divorced from his second wife and, despite his position and busy life, feeling rather lonely.  He accepted an invitation to a dinner party from a friend and met supermodel and recording artist, Carla Bruni.  The attraction between them was instant – she had already said that she wanted a man with nuclear power and he was smitten by the attentions of a beautiful, famous and intelligent woman.  Within months they were married.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0907633145</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 10:40, 18 November 2024

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Review of

Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People? by Claire Dederer

3star.jpg Politics and Society

Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a biography of the audience in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary cancel culture. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In 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 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. Full Review

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Review of

Charles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography by Edzard Ernst

4star.jpg Biography

For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. Charles, The Alternative Prince critically assesses the Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the background of the scientific evidence. There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, logical reasoning to his ambitions. Full Review

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Review of

Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of war by Andrew March

4.5star.jpg Biography

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 Nazi regime in the 1930s. Fred, a sensitive and thoughtful man, had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the time. Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetime. Full Review

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Review of

The Truth About Lisa Jewell by Will Brooker

5star.jpg Biography

Meet Lisa Jewell, one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. The 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 get-up never commonly worn at the 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. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the result. Full Review

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Review of

Invisible Ink: A Family Memoir by Martha Leigh

5star.jpg Biography

Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of life. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there. Full Review

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Review of

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton

4.5star.jpg Politics and Society

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 visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question why Japan? She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on the sound giro' – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of every party where you have to introduce yourself. Full Review

1781688370.jpg

Review of

A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros

5star.jpg Politics and Society

I confess I picked this one up from the library in my pre-lockdown forage of random stuff. Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the pages I have marked and return to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you in slowly. This one had me in the first two pages, wherein Gros explains why walking is not a sport. Full Review

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Review of

If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie

5star.jpg Biography

I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the one I've borrowed. I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for a reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better. Full Review

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Review of

Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis by Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg

5star.jpg Politics and Society

The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, it 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. Full Review

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Review of

Clara Colby: The International Suffragist by John Holliday

4star.jpg Biography

The 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 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 only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of 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 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 Wisconsin was a rude awakening. Full Review

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Review of

Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II by Wendy Williams

4star.jpg History

Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's 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 he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while, the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942. Full Review

1526614758.jpg

Review of

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

4star.jpg Biography

On the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in America. Full Review

1912242052.jpg

Review of

O Joy for me! by Keir Davidson

3star.jpg Art

Oh Joy for me! gives Coleridge credit for being the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world. Full Review

Graff Find.jpg

Review of

Find Another Place by Ben Graff

3.5star.jpg Autobiography

When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, he didn't take much notice of it. At the age of 24, Graff didn't realise the gravity of the pages he was holding. Full Review

1789016304.jpg

Review of

War and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam by Melanie Martin

5star.jpg Biography

Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in The Diary of Ann Frank but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies. Full Review

1786893452.jpg

Review of

The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri

4.5star.jpg Biography

Here in the West, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to the world and the situations that refugees find themselves in. It's rare that we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the middle of a revolution in Iran, fleeing to America as a ten-year-old. Full Review

0857058320.jpg

Review of

Lord Of All the Dead by Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

4star.jpg Biography

Lord Of All the Dead is a journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the 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 the centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side. Full Review

1788037812.jpg

Review of

The Fraternity of the Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908 by Brian Anderson

5star.jpg Biography

Originally passed in 1885, the law 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 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 margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967. Full Review

Buckland Zoo.jpg

Review of

The Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history by Richard Girling

4.5star.jpg Biography

As a conservationist in Victorian England before the term existed, Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of his time. Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, and any biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to tell. Full Review

Williams Captain.jpg

Review of

Captain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: His Military Life and Times by Ivor George Williams

4star.jpg Biography

In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. He was not destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at the age of 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the land. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell. Full Review

Peacock mountain.jpg

Review of

Into The Mountain, A Life of Nan Shepherd by Charlotte Peacock

4.5star.jpg Biography

Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the myriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while, like most other people I have my favourite genres, and favoured authors, and while, like most other people I read the reviews and follow up on what appeals, I also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness. Full Review

Move on to Newest Business and Finance Reviews