|summary=Tim Ewart is Royal Correspondent for ITV News, which must be one of the perfect starting points for writing a biography of the Queen as she celebrates her diamond jubilee. She's only the second British monarch to achieve this landmark - the other being Queen Victoria. After sixty years on the throne - and eighty six in public life - there's not much which isn't known about the Queen and few pictures which haven't previously seen the light of day, but Ewart's book is marked out by the inclusion of memorabilia which will have a freshness for many readers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780970064</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennie Bond
|title=Elizabeth: A Diamond Jubilee Portrait
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Jennie Bond was the BBC's Royal Correspondent for fourteen years from 1989 and covered a period of particular turbulence in the Royal family. It might not have been unprecedented but it was the first time that what was happening was so widely reported throughout the world. This book covers a much wider period with the emphasis being on pictures rather than words. It's a heavy, well-produced and lavishly-presented book of the type which would make a good present or souvenir of a visit to the United Kingdom.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847329608</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christina Schmid
|title=Always By My Side: Losing the love of my life and the fight to honour his memory
|rating=2.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=On Halloween 2009 bomb disposal expert Olaf (Oz) Schmid became another mortality statistic from the conflict in Afghanistan. Many people enjoy magazines like ''Hello'' who will absorb the stories of Oz's early years, how he met Christina, the family holidays, stories about both sets of parents etc. But for me, this is like looking at someone else's personal photo album; even if you have a connection with the album's owner, after a while it becomes boring and lacks meaning. Although I wouldn't have had half the inner strength and courage that Christina showed after the death of a soul mate, the emphasis of ''Always By My Side'' is out of kilter, the descriptions of life in Afghanistan and the subsequent campaign being almost lost in the family detail.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184605947X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Penelope Hughes-Hallett
|title=The Immortal Dinner: A famous evening of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinary. But the host, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, was no ordinary artist. He was a friend of many of the major artistic and literary figures of the day, in addition to being an ambitious painter of historical scenes. Sadly, his ambition was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilities, one and a half centuries after his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as well.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sara Turing
|title=Alan M Turing: Centenary Edition
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=June 2012 will see the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, brilliant mathematician, the man who played a major part in breaking the Enigma codes in the Second World War and is widely thought to be the father of computer science. To celebrate the anniversary Cambridge University Press have reprinted a short biography written by Turing's mother and included a memoir written by his older brother, John. I'm rarely impressed by biographies written by [[No Ordinary Man by Dominic Carman|family members]] particularly when they're still coming to terms with their own grief, but this book is startling for what it says about the family members as much as for what it says about Alan Turing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1107020581</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally E Svenson
|title=Lily, Duchess of Marlborough (1854 - 1909): A Portrait with Husbands
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=The woman we will eventually come to know as Lily, Duchess of Marlborough was born Eliza Warren Price in Troy, New York in 1854. Her father hailed from Bluegrass Country in Kentucky and met his future wife (who was from Troy) in Washington DC. The family was comfortably off (but not rich) and became part of the Troy's social elite when they returned to live there. Lily (as she became known) had an unremarkable childhood and youth but became wealthy though her marriage to Louis Hammersley, who died when she was twenty eight and left her a wealthy widow. His will would leave her legal problems which would simmer all her life and even after her own death twenty one years and two more husbands later.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1457507765</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Brown
|title=Lancelot 'Capability' Brown: The Omnipotent Magician 1716-1783
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Among those who helped their contemporaries living through the Age of Enlightenment to see the world around them in a different light, Brown was unquestionably one of the most influential. Having trained as a gardener, as a young man he acquired an exhaustive knowledge of plants and trees, as well as of drainage and water management. To this was added a rare ability to look at the dullest of gardens and landscapes, decide that they had 'capabilities' for improvement (hence the time-honoured epithet), and persuade the owner that a transformation was both possible and desirable.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951794</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Johanna Adorjan
|title=An Exclusive Love
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This moving memoir tells of the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form of Stephen) and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in October. The story is told by their granddaughter, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with Vera, with whom the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956. It ends with the police reports of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies in their bungalow in the Charlottenlund, a town of the Capital Region of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fateful, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad and memorable.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Karen Blumenthal
|title=Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Framed by Jobs' iconic speech at a Stanford College graduation ceremony, and the three stories he told the students, about connecting the dots, love and loss, and mortality, this biography gives a succinct and balanced account of Jobs' life, his successes and his failures, his passions and his ideals, and his infamously polarized personality. The author actively annotates the backstory of Jobs with references from this speech, as well as future events, carefully chosen statistics, and Jobs' own reminiscence, giving a rich context to his story. Jobs' achievements are incredible and they're not simply down to his genius, but his attitudes towards life and his incredible charisma.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408832062</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot
|title=Dotter of Her Father's Eyes
|rating=4.5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=If there's one person able to produce a worthwhile potted history of James Joyce's daughter, it should be Mary M Talbot. She's an eminent academic, and her father was a major Joycean scholar. Both females had parents with the same names too - James and Nora, both took to the stage when younger after going to dance school, but it's the contrasts between them this volume subtly picks out rather than any similarities, in a dual biography painted by one person we know by now as more than able to produce a delightful graphic novel - [[:Category:Bryan Talbot|Bryan Talbot]].
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096087</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Holroyd
|title=A Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Picture the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptor, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridors of Lord Grimthorpe's mansion. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour of the balconies of the coastal villa at Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrast, energetically inspired to passionate love affairs. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous, like E.M.Forster, Virginia Woolf, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West and then there was that tempestuous iconoclast, D.H.Lawrence. Many such lives were inspired by both landscape and lust, fashioned by each other's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here we learn of talents and beauty that inspires artistic endeavour, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. She, who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends in the pages of annotated diaries which became ''A Book of Secrets''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548941</amazonuk>
}}