Newest Biography Reviews
Biography
Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet by Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
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. Full review...
The Last Days of Richard III by John Ashdown-Hill
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. Full review...
The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal
'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 process. Edmund 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 fluency. He 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. Full review...
The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice, Countess de Janze by Paul Spicer
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. Full review...
Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City by Jonny Steinberg
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.
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? Full review...
Pitt the Elder: Man of War by Edward Pearce
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. Full review...
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
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. Partners In Health, the healthcare organisation he set up with his colleagues, takes this work worldwide. Full review...
In Search of Dr Watson - A Sherlockian Investigation by Molly Carr
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. Full review...
Mr Manchester and the Factory Girl: The Story of Tony and Lindsay Wilson by Lindsay Reade
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. Full review...
The Wit and Wisdom of G K Chesterton by Bevis Hillier
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. Full review...
Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett
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. Full review...
Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni: The True Story by Valerie Benaim and Yves Azeroual
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. Full review...
Race for the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford
In 1910 two European ships set out for the Antarctic. 'Terra Nova' was carrying British explorers under the leadership of Captain Robert Scott, while 'Fram' sailed with a rival Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen. The basic facts can be briefly summarized. Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on 14 December 1911 and returned home to a hero's welcome, while Scott reached the same destination 35 days later, only to perish with his men on the return journey. Their bodies were found by a search party some eight months after they had died. Full review...
Amazing Women: Inspirational Stories by Charles Margerison
The cover of this book tells the reader that these short bioviews or biographies can be read in 10 mins or so. This is one of a series within The Amazing People Club courtesy of the Amazing People Team. There is a rather fulsome Author's Note followed by a one-page introduction. I was immediately struck by the fact that, given the various feats of these women, I was anxious to read about them - and not about Dr Margerison. Less is more. He goes on to say (by now I'm getting a bit tired of the smiling Margerison) that 'The stories are inspirational and can help you achieve your ambitions in your own journey through life.' All of this and especially that last sentence sits rather uneasily with me, I'm afraid. Full review...
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings
These days, W. Somerset Maugham seems to be something of an anachronism. In his heyday, for much of a career which lasted from the end of the Victorian era to the 1950s, he was one of the most successful and widely read of all British writers, with his novels, short stories and plays spawning more film adaptations than any other author. Yet over the last thirty years or so he seems to have slipped from favour, as if his preoccupation with the Edwardian England in which he grew up and his end-of-empire settings are deeply embedded in an age we would rather forget. Moreover, as this very comprehensive biography demonstrates, he was not the most pleasant of individuals. The unhappy child, orphaned by the time he was ten, afflicted with a lifelong stammer and brought up by an aunt and uncle who showed him no affection, grew up to lead a long and unhappy life. Full review...
The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain's Greatest Comedian by Andrew McConnell Stott
This book has won several prestigious awards, so my expectations were raised before I'd even opened the book. And of all the plaudits given on the back cover, my favourite was Simon Callows' '(A) great big Christmas pudding of a book ...' Stott has researched his subject thoroughly. First up, there's a Grimaldi family tree, a Prologue, an Introduction and all this before you get to the story proper, so to speak. Full review...
The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My SS Grandfather's Secret Past and How Hitler Seduced a Generation by Martin Davidson
Meet Martin Davidson. Now, when I start my reviews like that, normally it means he's the main character, but he's not here. He's big in the world of BBC History documentaries, and grew up in the UK, half Scottish and half German, knowing that many of his older relatives lived through the Second World War. Foremost among them was his German grandfather, Bruno Langbehn, who would have been of fighting age - in his 30s - during the Third Reich. Nothing much was ever said about Bruno's own history during the war, except for many inflammatory, rising comments by Bruno himself. It took the old man to die for the truth to be admitted by Martin's mother - their forefather was in the SS. Full review...
Diaghilev: A Life by Sjeng Scheijen
Sergey Diaghilev was one of the towering figures in the artistic world of Russia, and indeed Europe, at the start of the 20th century. Born in 1872 the ambitious son of a bankrupt vodka producer from Perm, and a mother who died a few days later probably from puerperal fever, by his early twenties he was on close terms with such names as Tolstoy, Zola, Tchaikovsky and Brahms. He worked his way into the ranks of the cultural cognoscenti at St Petersburg and launched the itinerant troupe which would become the Ballets Russes, playing to packed houses as far west as Britain and the United States. Full review...
We Die Alone by David Howarth
Consider taking a five day sail in a small fishing boat the height of the North Sea from Shetland, to try and establish, train and supply some potentially vital anti-German resistance in the far, far north of occupied Norway, your homeland. Imagine the sight of heavy naval parades where you intended to land, as galling proof that your intel is ages out of date. Ponder too the fact that you get reported to the Nazis due to the most ridiculous slight of fortune. All your colleagues are dead or captured, your equipment blown up with your trawler to keep it safe from Jerry hands, half your big toe has been shot off, and you're forced to go on the run in one of Europe's last, and coldest, wildernesses. And you have no idea whatsoever quite how bad this scenario is going to get. Full review...
Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels by Janet Soskice
Sisters of Sinai tells the story of two extraordinary, Victorian women who unearthed an important early copy of the Gospels from a remote monastery in Egypt. It hardly seems possible that they organised and executed such remarkable feats of unaccompanied travel during an age in which women's freedom was hidebound by their status as the inferior sex. Janet Soskice is well-placed as a feminist philosopher and theologian to explore their lives. Full review...
After You: Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father by Natasha McElhone
What would you do if, without warning, your brilliant, loving, superman partner died from a catastrophic heart event at the untimely age of 43, leaving you with two young boys and a third on the way? Most of us would probably reach for the Valium and book a very long course of counseling. But Natascha McElhone couldn't because she was already stretched, juggling a busy transatlantic career as an actress as well as caring for her sparky young family. Coping as a single parent left no spare time for self-indulgence; within months she had a new baby as well. So she found her own way, grabbing instead at odd moments to write in her well-established diary. These short entries … e-mails, almost … to her dead husband form the basis of 'After You'. Full review...
The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family by Peter Firstbrook
The book jacket states that this is 'the untold story of an African family' and with a presidential photograph of Barack Obama, the book is certainly eye-catching. Along with, I'm sure, millions of others, I've read 'The Audacity Of Hope' and was charmed and blown away in almost equal measure, so I was keen to get started on this book. Full review...
Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the World by Stefan Klein
This excellent combination of science history and biography starts with the most populist and some of the most awkwardly scientific. Basically it throws modern-day science at the Mona Lisa, which you might think is a little unfair – can she cope with being analysed, and the neuroscience we now know used in interpreting her? Of course she can – she’s the world’s best-known masterpiece of Italian art, and she’s survived much worse. Klein’s approach fully works, when we see also the science da Vinci did know and that he worked on himself, which all helps us know partly why the truths of La Gioconda are still unknowable. Full review...
So Much To Tell by Valerie Grove
Kaye Webb’s career would be the envy of many a young bookworm. From 1961 to 1978 she ran Puffin Books, the children’s division of Penguin. I still have some paperbacks from that time with “Kaye Webb – Editor” on the first page inside the front cover. Full review...
Bittersweet: Lessons from my Mother's Kitchen by Matt MacAllester
Matt MacAllester is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, used to covering the horrors of war, but nothing prepared him for his investigation into the life and death of his mother Anne. In May 2005 Ann MacAllester died suddenly of a heart attack and her son was overwhelmed by grief. This might not sound unusual, but his mother had been largely absent from him for about a quarter of a century, trapped in her own private world of madness. His earliest memories were of an idyllic childhood, where wonderful food was always at the centre of family life and with the help of Elizabeth David, his mother’s favourite cookery writer he sought to find his mother through the food she cooked. Full review...
Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall by Chris Welch and Lucian Randall
Redheads, they say, feel more pain than the rest of us. They may even have a layer of skin too few. However literally true this might be, it certainly seems to be the case for Vivian Stanshall. As his second wife says in this excellent book, 'There's nothing between him and all the sensations the world has to give us'. Full review...
High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood by Donald Spoto
In his defence, we must acknowledge Spoto's subtitle. It underlines that this does not in any way shape or form claim to be a biography of the American actress who become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. It is an analysis of her film career: a consideration of the "Hollywood years". Full review...
St George: Let's Hear it for England! by Alison Maloney
I was a bit of a patriot, even when it wasn't as fashionable as it is now becoming. Perhaps this is due to my once having played St. George in a Cub Scout celebration and getting the chance to personally slay the dragon in knitted chain mail with a plastic sword. In a world where being English has become synonymous with football violence and the flag of St. George is being used by a political party condemned as racist, it's perhaps unsurprising that more people celebrate St. Patrick's Day than St. George's Day. Full review...
The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers
Author Douglas Rogers is a Zimbabwean who moved away from the country many years ago, but has never been able to persuade his parents – two white farmers, Lyn and Roz – to follow him out of their homeland, despite the resettlement policies of Robert Mugabe, the hyper-inflation, and the corruption in the country. Instead, the pair just wanted to stay on the farm welcoming people to Drifters, their backpackers' lodge. Full review...
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
'Strength in What Remains' is the inspirational account of Deogratias, a man who has fled from the genocide and civil war in Burundi (just south of the equator in East Central Africa, bordering Rwanda). He escapes to New York, out of fear and want of a safer life; only his new found American life isn't quite what it promised. Full review...
Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend by Catrine Clay
'You have to learn to be hard men, to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'. Such did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies in the 1930s. He probably did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with a broken neck, such is the lifetime of difference between the two references. But that lifetime, as packed and varied as it was, is in the pages of this ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured book. Full review...
Into The Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown by Angela Thirlwell
Ford Madox Brown, born in 1821 in Calais of a Scottish family, raised in France and Belgium before settling in England, was one of the foremost Victorian artists. Throughout his career he was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and shared many of their same ideals, style and subject matter, though he never officially became a member of the group. Full review...
Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart by Chris Skidmore
When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in November 1558, everyone's dominant concern was the matter of her taking an appropriate husband and securing the succession. The man most likely to become her husband was Robert Dudley, whom she made her Master of the Horse and entrusted with considerable responsibility for her coronation festivities. The fact that he was already married to Amy Robsart did little to quell the speculation, especially since she was believed to be dying of breast cancer. Full review...
Gandhi: Naked Ambition by Jad Adams
Until I read this book, Mohandas Karamchand (or Mahatma for short) Gandhi had always been a very shadowy figure. I was familiar with the picture of the loincloth-clad man who fell victim to an assassin's bullet shortly after Indian independence, but knew little more. Full review...
The Surprising Life of Constance Spry by Sue Shephard
The very mention of the name Constance Spry conjures up thoughts of flower arranging and books of recipes from a bygone era. Perhaps it was her misfortune that she died just before television could have made a celebrity of her, as it did of the likes of Fanny Cradock and Nigella Lawson, to name but two. Even so, she enjoyed a remarkably successful career, and the woman behind the public face was no ordinary career woman, but quite an unconventional personality. Full review...
Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman
Roger Barrett, who later acquired the moniker 'Syd' (let's make him Syd from now on) was born in Cambridge in 1946. The fourth of five children, he was the only one to inherit any lasting artistic talent, which came from his father Max. The latter was a senior pathologist, member of the local Philharmonic Society, gifted singer, pianist and watercolour painter. Full review...
The Woman Who Shot Mussolini by Frances Stonor Saunders
Most British titled families of the 19th and 20th centuries have produced their fair share of rebels. Yet few came as close to changing the course of European history as the Honourable Violet Gibson, one of eight children of Baron Ashbourne, a Protestant Anglo-Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870s. Full review...
The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn by Josephine Wilkinson
Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had already been courted by three suitors, any of whom might have become her husband - and possibly saved her from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butler, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended to marry in order to settle a family dispute over the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came to an end in the face of legal obstacles, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberland. With a little help from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealed. Full review...
Matt Monro: The Singer's Singer by Michele Monro
In terms of British chart statistics and record sales, Matt Monro never quite fulfilled his full potential. When measured against the achievements of contemporary ballad singers like Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, he fell some way short. Yet the former Terry Parsons was a regular fixture on the light entertainment circuit, and overseas, particularly in Latin America and the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one of Britain's most successful exports ever, and at one point he was the biggest selling artist in Spain. His idol Frank Sinatra, to whom he was often compared, often said that Matt was the only British singer he ever really listened to. Full review...
Dancing to the Precipice : Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French Revolution by Caroline Moorehead
Two hundred years ago, with the fall of the monarchy and the Napoleonic wars, France underwent one cataclysmic change after another. There were many who witnessed and experienced the volatile age at first hand, but few left a more detailed record than the subject of this biography, Lucie-Henriette Dillon, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du Pin. Full review...
Birthright: The True Story That Inspired Kidnapped by A.Roger Ekirch
They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and it is not unusual for novels to be based partly on fact. So it was in the case of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, Sir Walter Scott's Guy Mannering, and at least three others, all of which can point to the saga of James Annesley for inspiration. Full review...
William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution by John Van der Kiste
At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another meaningful period – the Victorian era. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession to the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'. Full review...
