Difference between revisions of "Newest Biography Reviews"
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| + | |author=S D Tucker | ||
| + | |title=Great British Eccentrics | ||
| + | |rating=4.5 | ||
| + | |genre=Biography | ||
| + | |summary= Some very strange people have stalked our green and pleasant land. In his introduction, Tucker asks us why. Is it our status as an island people which has made so many of our countrymen turn in on ourselves? Has our long libertarian tradition of the idea of individual freedom, as long as we do nobody else any harm, permitted weirdness to flourish among us? | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445660326</amazonuk> | ||
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|author= Karen Jennings | |author= Karen Jennings | ||
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|summary=Misogynists are manmade. And if anyone was in a position to hate men and the lot they put on their shoulders, it was Ava Blackjack. Her surname spoke of an abusive man she had a son by, but it was her time with four other men that made for one of the last century's more remarkable stories. An Inuit native, but one brought up in a city and with English lessons, she was invited on an excursion alongside many other 'Eskimo' and four intrepid Westerners, to the uninhabited Wrangel Island, perched off the northern Siberian coast. They were there just to stick a flag in it and call it British, even if they were pretty much fully American and Canadian, and the chap whose ideas these all were bore an Icelandic name; she was along to provide native expertise, especially waterproof fur clothing. And that was it – none of her kin joined her, leaving her in one tent and four men in another, in one of the world's most remote and inhospitable places. And that was just the start of her worries… | |summary=Misogynists are manmade. And if anyone was in a position to hate men and the lot they put on their shoulders, it was Ava Blackjack. Her surname spoke of an abusive man she had a son by, but it was her time with four other men that made for one of the last century's more remarkable stories. An Inuit native, but one brought up in a city and with English lessons, she was invited on an excursion alongside many other 'Eskimo' and four intrepid Westerners, to the uninhabited Wrangel Island, perched off the northern Siberian coast. They were there just to stick a flag in it and call it British, even if they were pretty much fully American and Canadian, and the chap whose ideas these all were bore an Icelandic name; she was along to provide native expertise, especially waterproof fur clothing. And that was it – none of her kin joined her, leaving her in one tent and four men in another, in one of the world's most remote and inhospitable places. And that was just the start of her worries… | ||
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1613730985</amazonuk> | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1613730985</amazonuk> | ||
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Revision as of 12:02, 27 November 2016
Great British Eccentrics by S D Tucker
Some very strange people have stalked our green and pleasant land. In his introduction, Tucker asks us why. Is it our status as an island people which has made so many of our countrymen turn in on ourselves? Has our long libertarian tradition of the idea of individual freedom, as long as we do nobody else any harm, permitted weirdness to flourish among us? Full review...
Travels With My Father by Karen Jennings
Despite the coda, this does not feel like an autobiographical novel. I am not sure why Jennings felt the need to couch it in those terms unless there is much in the structure that is fiction. I'm hoping there isn't. I am hoping that the fiction is purely that conceit that this pretends to be a novel. If that was necessary to get it published, then I'll applaud the subterfuge, because this is writing that needs to be read. It is – if as true as I want it to be – a delicate reminiscence: a daughter's in memoriam to a father she loved, worshipped, idealised, cared-for, lived with, and yes (in true daughterly fashion) at times, hated. A father who was, therefore, a good dad. Full review...
Pop Pickers and Music Vendors: David Jacobs, Alan Freeman, John Peel, Tommy Vance and Roger Scott by John Van der Kiste
You know those questions you get in celebrity interviews - 'which extinct being would you most like to see brought back to life?' Well, I'd like to see Jimmy Savile brought back, so that he could get his comeuppance. It's not just the damage he did to children and young people, dreadful as that was - it's the shadow he cast over the entertainment industry. We know that he wasn't alone in what he did, but somehow there's a whole era of entertainment which has been tarred by the same brush. John Van der Kiste has turned the spotlight away from Savile and on to five of the great DJs of the music industry. Full review...
Tales of Loving and Leaving by Gaby Weiner
In Tales of Loving and Leaving, author Gaby Weiner tells the story of three of her family members: her grandmother, Amalia Moszkowicz Dinger; her mother, Steffi Dinger; and her father, Uszer Frocht. Full review...
Henry III: The Son of Magna Carta by Matthew Lewis
For a monarch whose reign over England of fifty-six years was unequalled until the nineteenth century, Henry III remains curiously little-known. Nobody could claim that he was a particularly outstanding or successful ruler, but the fact that he held his throne for so long in an unstable age was no mean achievement in itself. Full review...
Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII's True Wife by Amy Licence
Catherine of Aragon, the first of Henry VIII's six wives and Queens, was arguably the most unhappy figure during the Tudor era who did not meet her end on the scaffold or at the stake. The cliché 'tragic love story' must be a fitting one in her case. Full review...
The Road To War: Duty & Drill, Courage & Capture by Steven Burgauer
After World War II Bill Frodsham led an everyday life, raising a family in an ordinary US suburb. He, his wife and children became friends with the Burgauer family, little Steven Burgauer knowing him as Mr F. Time rolls on and little Steven grows up, and then eventually retires from the American financial sector to write science fiction and lecture from time to time. He's therefore surprised when, out of the blue, Mr F's daughter tracks him down and presents him with a pile of handwritten notes asking Steven to make them into a book. These are Mr F's self-authored memoirs, stretching from his youth onwards and showing that this seemingly good, kind but unremarkable man was anything but unremarkable. During the war Mr F trained for the impossible and then lived it as he led men across Omaha Beach on D Day. He was then captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW in inhumane conditions. Steven accepted the request and The Road to War is the result: the life and war of Captain William C Frodsham Jr. Full review...
The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me by Sofka Zinovieff
Faringdon House in Oxfordshire was the home of Lord Berners; composer, writer, painter, friend of Stravinsky and Gertrude Stein, and a man renowned for both his eccentricity and his homosexuality. Turning Faringdon into an aesthete'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 to all as the Mad Boy. If those two sounded an odd couple, especially at a time when homosexuality was illegal, the addition of Jennifer Fry to the household in 1942, a pregnant high society girl who became Robert's wife, was really rather astounding. After the child was born, the marriage soon foundered. Berners died in 1950, and Robert was left in charge of Faringdon, ably assisted by a ferocious Austrian housekeeper. This mad 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. Full review...
Penguin Bloom: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a Family by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Greive
Cameron and his wife, Sam, had been leading a very active, adventurous life. Even after the birth of their three sons they wanted to continue their adventures, 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 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 everything. Full review...
Orson Welles, Volume 3: One-Man Band by Simon Callow
Orson Welles, the noted actor, director and producer, was one 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 impossible, and this is the third of three solid instalments. Full review...
George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door by Graeme Thomson
George Harrison was the youngest of the four wartime-born youngsters who came together to form The Beatles. He was also the only one who came from a relatively stable family background, his early years not scarred by the loss of one parent through divorce or early bereavement. With two elder brothers and a sister, he was the baby of the Harrison clan. A poor scholar but a promising trainee electrician in his teens, a musical ear and the advent of rock'n'roll soon led him along an alternative career path. This is a finely balanced warts-and-all portrait of the man, his life, character, songwriting and other interests, an often baffling figure, a strange mix of good and bad. Thomson has dug deeply and spoken to several people who knew him well and worked with him, and as a life of the 'Dark Horse', I doubt it could be bettered. Scrupulously researched, it is easily the most comprehensive Harrison life I have come across, and the most objective. Full review...
Byron's Women by Alexander Larman
George Gordon, who became the 6th Lord Byron at the age of ten in 1798 on the death of his grandfather, is remembered not only as one of the great poets of the Romantic era, but also as somebody whose severe lack of moral compass was guaranteed to attract scandal wherever he laid his hat. This new book, as the title suggests, is not a biography of him, rather an account of his life and those of nine of the women who were unfortunate enough to become involved with him. They include his mother, his abused wife, his half-sister with whom he slept as well, plus lovers and mistresses and his two daughters. Larman admits that there could have been several more – actresses, servant women, in fact almost anyone. For Byronic, maybe we should read 'insatiable'. Full review...
Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower by Susan Higginbotham
The fate of Margaret Pole, who as the cover says has a good claim to the title of 'the last Plantagenet', was a sorry one. As a close relation of the Yorkists and the Tudors at a time of upheaval, her life was overshadowed by the executions of several of her family – and ultimately leading to her own, largely it seems, for the 'crime' of being who she was. Full review...
When the War is Over by Barbara Fox
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 in the idyllic village of Bampton, where they spent several years living with a kindly schoolmaster and his wife. As they settled into village life, 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. Full review...
James Dean: Rebel Life by John Howlett
James Dean was in a sense to the 1950s what Sid Vicious was to the 1970s – the ultimate 'live fast, die young' character, although as the star of three classic movies of the era he achieved rather more in his short life than the hapless punk icon ever did in his. Full review...
Prince Arthur: The Tudor King Who Never Was by Sean Cunningham
Prince Arthur was the eldest son of Henry VII. Had he lived longer, there might have been no Henry VIII, thus paving the way for a very large counterfactual 'what if' in British history. The name Arthur, that of the mythical King several centuries earlier, had great expectations attached, never to be fulfilled. Full review...
The Beauty of Her Age: A Tale of Sex, Scandal and Money in Victorian England by Jenifer Roberts
The name of Yolande Stephens (nee Duvernay) is not that well-known in the annals of Victorian England, but behind it lies an enthralling rags-to-riches saga. How did a young girl born into poverty in Paris become one of the most celebrated ballerinas of her time in England, and after that one of the richest women in the country, with a fortune on her death which rivalled that of Queen Victoria? Full review...
William the Conqueror: The Bastard of Normandy by Peter Rex
The basic facts of William I's life are inevitably as clouded as those surrounding the Norman conquest, the events and politics which led up to it, and 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'. Full review...
Henry V: The Life of the Warrior King & the Battle of Agincourt by Teresa Cole
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 (as well as by two film versions of the drama). Ironically he was one of several great-grandchildren of Edward III, and as he was considered relatively unimportant at the time of his birth, 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. Full review...
Alfred Hitchcock by Peter Ackroyd
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. Turner, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and Charlie Chaplin are among those who have come under his scrutiny, and now he looks at the noted film director and producer, the 'Master of Suspense'. Full review...
Broken Vows: Tony Blair The Tragedy of Power by Tom Bower
In May 1997 we went to vote gleefully, sure that there was going to be a change from the tired, sleaze-ridden Conservative government we'd been suffering. The Blairs' entry into Downing Street the following day - through crowds of well-wishers - was like a breath of fresh air and (perhaps fortunately) it would be years before I discovered that the 'well wishers' had been bussed in for the event. Looking back now it seems that our hopes for what the 'New Labour' government could achieve were unreasonably high and there's a special place in hell reserved for those who disappoint us in this way. I've often wondered quite how history will see Blair: Afghanistan and Iraq as well as his failure to deal with Gordon Brown would always sour his premiership for me, but to what extent could his achievements such as the Good Friday Agreement, the minimum wage and higher welfare payments be balanced against his failures? Full review...
The Lady and the Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Freedom by Peter Popham
On 13 November 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest after spending 15 of the previous 21 years as a prisoner of Burma's military junta. Political reforms soon followed, culminating with Suu (as she prefers to be known) being elected to parliament. The West rejoiced; leaders, business men, and tourists poured in; and Suu entered the pantheon of modern-day political heroes. Burma was a burgeoning democracy, and Suu was a saint. In reality, as Peter Popham argues in 'The Lady and the Generals', the situation was far more complex. Full review...
Brief Lives by John Aubrey
John Aubrey was a modest man, an antiquarian and the inventor of modern biography. His lives of the prominent figures of his generation include Shakespeare, Milton, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Funny, illuminating and full of historical details, they have been plundered by historians for centuries. Here Aubrey's biographical writings are collected, painting a series of unforgettable portraits of the characters of his day – all more alive and kicking than in a conventional history book. Full review...
John Aubrey: My Own Life by Ruth Scurr
John Aubrey, the seventeenth-century antiquary, writer and archaeologist, occupies a peculiar, even unique place in English literature. When he died, the work for which he is most famous, 'Brief Lives', was a disorganised collection of manuscripts which remained unpublished for over a century. Only in the last hundred years or so has be become more widely recognised as an interesting character and perceptive commentator on society, scholarship and on his contemporaries during the post-restoration era. Full review...
Edward IV & Elizabeth Woodville: A True Romance by Amy Licence
Given the current resurgence in popularity of biographies dealing with the Yorkists, the time is right for an account of the marriage of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, a union that proved so divisive in the era of York vs Lancaster. With several of the great nobility declaring allegiance to one side and then another in turn during the Wars of the Roses, it was a divisive era to start with. Full review...
The Lost Tudor Princess: A Life of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox by Alison Weir
Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was one of the more shadowy, lesser known personalities among the Tudor royal family. She was the daughter of King Henry VIII's sister Margaret, by her second marriage to Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, and like so many others who were closely related to King Henry VIII and his children, she led what was at times quite a precarious life in that she was on occasion suspected of treasonable activities, and also experienced no little personal tragedy Full review...
Marooned in the Arctic by Peggy Caravantes
Misogynists are manmade. And if anyone was in a position to hate men and the lot they put on their shoulders, it was Ava Blackjack. Her surname spoke of an abusive man she had a son by, but it was her time with four other men that made for one of the last century's more remarkable stories. An Inuit native, but one brought up in a city and with English lessons, she was invited on an excursion alongside many other 'Eskimo' and four intrepid Westerners, to the uninhabited Wrangel Island, perched off the northern Siberian coast. They were there just to stick a flag in it and call it British, even if they were pretty much fully American and Canadian, and the chap whose ideas these all were bore an Icelandic name; she was along to provide native expertise, especially waterproof fur clothing. And that was it – none of her kin joined her, leaving her in one tent and four men in another, in one of the world's most remote and inhospitable places. And that was just the start of her worries… Full review...
