Newest Autobiography Reviews
Autobiography
The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham by Michael Jago
John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris, volunteered to serve in the army at the outbreak of the Second World War, but his sight prevented front-line service and he joined MI5. Prior to this he’d been a journalist, working on the '’Hull Daily Mail’’ before moving to Fleet Street. He found a natural home in MI5 and a considerable talent for interrogation. At a time when spies are thought of as being flamboyant, he was the opposite - a small, bespectacled man who could easily blend into the background. His greatest skill was that he was a patient listener. John Le Carre has said that nobody who knew John and the work he was doing could have missed the description of Smiley in his first novel. Le Carre was a junior colleague in MI5. Full review...
The Romantic Economist: A Story of Love and Market Forces by William Nicolson
William Nicolson was a student - well a student of economics, to be accurate. He had an uncanny knack of losing girlfriends far too quickly, the last one having departed in a personal best time of six weeks. Actually I don't think that was too bad - I've encountered a lot of men who only ever managed about thirty minutes - but it worried Will and he considered applying what he had learned as an economist to his relationships with the fair sex. Girls were something of a mystery to him but he was sure that if he used his ability to reduce a complex world to a set of rational principles then he should be on to a winner. Or two. Full review...
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
One day Susannah Cahalan was a bright, outgoing tabloid reporter in New York, with a promising career ahead of her. Within weeks a mysterious illness reduced her to an incoherent shadow of her former self, struggling with basic tasks, and left doctors at one of the world's top medical centres baffled. In Brain on Fire, Cahalan – now in the 'post-recovery' stage of her life – attempts to recapture the memories and events from the her 'month of madness' before diagnosis and cure. Full review...
Bath Times and Nursery Rhymes by Pam Weaver
In 1961, a young 16 year old girl called Pam Weaver embarks on a career path that will change her life. Fed up with the tedium of working on the broken biscuit counter at Woolworths, she decides to train for her NNEB. Bath Times and Nursery Rhymes sees Pam progress from a shy and awkward teenager to a competent and caring nursery nurse. Reluctant to stay too long in any position, Pam tries her hand at a variety of jobs, including her initial employment in a Council-run children’s home, working as a private nanny to a rich young widow and an eventful but emotional stint in a premature baby ward. Full review...
The Crocodile by the Door: The Story of a House, a Farm and a Family by Selina Guinness
Selina Guinness lived at Tibradden as a child and in 2002 she and her husband-to-be, Colin Graham, moved back to the house when her elderly uncle Charles became frail. The surname might lead you to suspect that there were brewery millions in the background but this wasn't the case. The couple were young academics and doing what needed to be done at Tibradden would need to be done in addition to full-time jobs. The house was on the outskirts of Dublin - 'derelict fields' if you were a property developer or the last defence against the encroaching city if you were not. Full review...
Rod: The autobiography by Rod Stewart
There is only one Rod. One of the first things I noticed about this book was that his surname did not appear on the spine or the front cover of the dust jacket – only on the inside flaps. However, as someone whose career has kept him a household name for over four decades, it is probably superfluous anyway. Full review...
Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie's memoir of, predominantly, the fatwa years is completely gripping - albeit not necessarily in the way the author intended I suspect. For any lover of literature it's a fascinating insight into the man. People write memoirs largely to put their side of the story. Rushdie is of course supremely intelligent and a gifted wordsmith and yet while aspects of the story remain shocking and induce both anger and incredulity that the situation was allowed to go as far as it did and for so long, it's probably not a book that will change your views of Rushdie the man, not least as he displays many of the traits that the press ascribed to him. Oh why do our heroes always have to be so imperfect? Full review...
Born to Ride: The Autobiography of Stephen Roche by Stephen Roche
With all the revelations about the systemised doping culture surrounding Lance Armstrong's team in the 1990s, it was interesting to read a story of a time before cycling was embroiled in one drugs scandal after another. Although perhaps not as memorable as Armstrong's career, Stephen Roche's will hold a place in cycling history for 1987, when he became only the second man to win the Tour de France, the Giro D'Italia and the World Championships in the same season. A quarter of a century after that remarkable feat, Roche has produced his autobiography, Born to Ride. Full review...
The Diaries of Nella Last: Writing in War and Peace by Patricia Malcolmson and Robert Malcolmson (Editors)
This work brings together a selection of some of Nella Last's diary entries from the 1940's and 1950's. She wrote from her home in Barrow-in-Furness as part of the Mass Observation project, writing a huge amount of material, some of which has already been published as Nella Last's War, Nella Last's Peace and Nella Last in the 1950s This volume brings together the three previous collections, with new material too, taking the reader through the war years and on into post-war Britain. Full review...
A Recipe for Life by Antonio Caluccio
Antonio Carluccio is a name you know well if you've any interest in food and particularly Italian food. He's well known as a cook, restaurateur, deli owner, television personality and author. In everything he's done he's concentrated on the flavour of the food - this isn't the man to turn to if you're interested in fine dining as there's a lack of frills and ostentation - and he has his own phrase to describe his vision. 'Mof mof' stands for 'maximum of flavour and minimum of fuss'. He's a man after my own heart but when I thought about it I realised that I knew little, beyond the occasional news item, of Carluccio the man. His autobiography came at just the right time. Full review...
The Testimony by Halina Wagowska
The Holocaust must have been particularly horrendous for the young survivor. Halina here says how she had barely three years of schooling before the events of the Final Solution took over, and her life was changed for ever. It was a life a little different to those around her – a nanny who took her to a cathedral and brought her home full of the Catholic anti-Semitic sentiment. Religion and its effects were of little consequence – she was more worried that those seeing a photo of her and a dog had more admiration for the look of the dog than of her. But things were only to change for the worst – existence in the Lodz ghetto, and later, the death camps. This book is just not arch enough to be too structured and self-aware, so when Halina sees those by tram travelling through the ghetto and wonders what the life of the gentiles on it is like, this only provides one small glimpse of how her life turned into one of those thinking of and helping others, with special affinity for those in minorities everywhere. Full review...
My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding
Clare Balding was born into a racing family - her father, Ian, was the trainer of Mill Reef who won the Derby in 1971, the same year that Clare was born. Whilst her father would never forget the year that his horse won the Derby he would usually fail to remember that it was also the year of his daughter's birth. Horses came first and they were the priority in Ian Balding's life: the family had to adjust accordingly. He was a gifted and successful trainer who understood the animals in his care and his record, including Mill Reef's Derby success speaks for itself. Clare's childhood was separate from the life of the racing stable but she inherited her family's love of animals. Full review...
The Train in the Night: A Story of Music and Loss by Nick Coleman
Picture the scenario. You have always been passionate about music, with a catholic taste which embraces classical, soul and heavy rock with a bit of everything in between, and your job is that of an arts and music journalist. In your mid-forties you wake up one morning to find your whole world changed overnight by Sudden Neursosensory Hearing Loss. It has a devastating effect on your balance when subjected to any kind of sound, whether it is an aeroplane overhead, the roar of the crowd at a football match, or the music which you once adored with every fibre of your being. Your head is filled with tinnitus, like a very poorly-tuned radio which lacks an off switch. Full review...
Relish: My Life on a Plate by Prue Leith
Prue Leith was born in South Africa, the daughter of a prominent actress who was considered 'dangerously liberal' in her views on race. Prue was largely unaware of the horrors of apartheid and had a privileged lifestyle. She came to London in the early sixties but still retains an awareness of colour as a legacy of her childhood. What didn't come from her childhood was her love of cooking - she drifted into catering almost accidentally but went on to set up a very successful catering company and then to open Leith's Restaurant . Her cookery school and regular food columns in national newspapers followed soon after. Full review...
Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero by Grant Morrison
Consider the super-hero comic. Borne out of a need to create cheap and franchise-friendly content for newspapers in America, it's grown into a billion-dollar industry, with Hollywood jumping on the bandwagon of several major characters now their FX have finally caught up with the printed page. Disposable? - once upon a time, yet now collectable to the tune of a million dollars or more. Frivolous? - probably, yet not exclusively now, if ever so. At one point here, they are just one product of the infinitely powerful imaginary system each of us carries in our brain, and at the other 'ethereal, paper-thin constructs of unfettered imagination'. Full review...
Dust of the Danakil by Ian Mathie
I enjoyed all three of Ian Mathie’s previous books so it’s probably no surprise to find me praising this one too. Already, for me, this writer has set a high bar with his pared, modest prose and authentic descriptions of life as an educated white man with unsophisticated mid-African tribes in the middle of the twentieth century. His everyday life in this book is a perilous adventure – modern travel memoirs seem banal by comparison. Full review...
Lay the Favourite: A True Story about Playing to Win in the Gambling Underworld by Beth Raymer
It was a dream which brought Beth Raymer to Las Vegas, but the reality was that she ended up waiting tables in a low-end diner and living in a distinctly unsavoury motel. A chance meeting brought her into contact with Dink, the self-styled king of the city's sports betting and she moved into what was very much a man's world - of high-stakes gambling and a lot of people you wouldn't necessarily want your daughter to know. This is the story of how Beth learned the trade and moved into the world of the big money where gambling regulations don't apply. Being sharp was what it was all about. Full review...
Real Life: One Woman's Guide to Love, Men and Other Everyday Disasters by Melissa Kite
We're used to thinking about career women who have it all: the high-flyer who goes home to her husband, children and immaculate house to plan their next holiday and their social life. We might not know these people - but everything seems to tell us that they're there. What, though, of the single woman, no longer in the first flush of youth (that's probably nineteen, these days) who struggles just to keep going? What of the woman who struggles to keep the boiler going and who is tempted to kidnap the television repairman and tie him to the bed because she's convinced that the television will stop working the moment he goes? Full review...
The Grand Tour: Letters and photographs from the British Empire expedition by Agatha Christie and Mathew Prichard (editor)
In 1922 Agatha Christie, already the author of three very successful books, was happily married with a small daughter, and her heart's desire was to continue writing while she led a quiet life in the country. However her husband Archie was becoming increasingly restless and disenchanted with working in the City, and his longing for a change was suddenly to be fulfilled in a most unexpected way. An old friend, Major Belcher, 'blessed with great powers of bluff', presented them both with the opportunity of a lifetime – to join him on a trip to several imperial outposts in preparation for the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition to be staged at Wembley. Archie would be his financial adviser, and Agatha was cordially invited for the trip, as his wife. (Two-year-old Rosalind would have to stay at home, a decision which involved some soul-searching). Full review...
Home to Roost by Tessa Hainsworth
There seems to be a plethora of books about people who have moved to unusual places, or changed lifestyle in middle age for a variety of reasons. This book features a London family who have moved to Cornwall, and is the third (so far) in a series about their transition. Full review...
The Puppy Diaries: Living with a Dog Named Scout by Jill Abramson
Jill Abramson had a dog whom she adored - a White West Highland by the name of Buddy - and after his death she wasn't certain that she wanted another dog. Would she bond with the newcomer? Would she always be comparing the pup with his predecessor? But - times change - and in 2009 Jill and her husband Henry brought home a Golden Retriever by the name of Scout. Over the following year Abramson wrote a column about raising Scout for the New York Times website and it's this column which forms the basis for 'The Puppy Diaries: Living With a Dog Named Scout'. Full review...
All in a Don's Day by Mary Beard
Mary Beard's latest collection, 'All in a Don's Day', of her assembled blog pieces from 2009 until the end of 2011, covers similar concerns to her previous selection, It's a Don's Life. Professor Beard is a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and became Classics Professor at there in 2004. She is also an expert in Roman laughter, an interest which she fully indulges in the pages of her TLS blog. In her latest collection she bemoans the parlous current state of both Education and the Academy, and makes witty observations on matters as various as television chefs, what and how to visit in Rome and the art and worth of completing references in an age when only positive things may be said about postgraduate job-seekers. Full review...
Under a Canvas Sky: Living Outside Gormenghast by Clare Peake
To many of us, the very name Peake on the cover of a book will immediately suggest the creator of 'Gormenghast' and his family. We have had the occasional biography of Mervyn Peake from others, plus the recollections of his widow Maeve, and to join them, here is the story from another perspective altogether – that of their youngest child, daughter Clare. Full review...
The Little Gypsy: A Life of Freedom, a Time of Secrets by Roxy Freeman
Roxy Freeman, born to a life of freedom and open roads, shares a gypsy caravan with her parents, brother and four sisters. As a child she may not have gone to school but from an early age her skills, suited to living off the land, surpassed those of her more traditional peers. However, her innocence is stolen from her by family friend, 'Uncle' Tony and her childhood becomes tainted by fear and secrets. Full review...
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot
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 - Bryan Talbot. Full review...
A Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd
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. Full review...
Yossarian Slept Here by Erica Heller
'To live forever or die in the attempt' was the essential glory in life and living that is at the heart of John Yossarian in Catch 22. This autobiography of the daughter of his creator, Joseph Heller, reveals how the same excitement and joie de vivre suffused throughout the Heller family. The harebrained unpredictability, the madcap exploits and relationships bowl us through this book with terrific pace and verve. Full review...
Pig in the Middle by Matt Whyman
I'm so pleased I read this book. It's only the occasional writer who grabs me by the short and curlies with his observation of human nature, but accomplished children's writer Matt Whyman not only grabbed me, but sold me on the mini-pigs as well. Full review...
Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia. a Father and Son's Story by Patrick Cockburn and Henry Cockburn
In February 2002 Patrick Cockburn was in Kabul, reporting to The Independent on the fall of the Taliban. While he was there he called his wife Jan at home in England, and was shocked to learn that their 20-year-old elder son Henry had been rescued by fishermen after coming close to death while swimming, fully clothed, in the icy waters of the Newhaven estuary. The police had decided that he was a danger to himself, and he was now in a mental hospital. Full review...
Out of the Ashes: Britain After the Riots by David Lammy
Just about everyone in the country was shocked as pictures of the 2011 riots (which began in Tottenham and spread to other major cities in the UK) unfolded on our television screens. Everyone, that is, except David Lammy, MP for the area. He might not have known when it would happen or what would trigger the riot, but a year before, he said that it would happen. This wasn't a lucky guess: Lammy was born in Tottenham and brought up on the Broadwater Farm Estate as one of five children raised by his single-parent mother and he knows what's happening on the ground. Full review...
A Dancer in Wartime: One Girl's Journey from the Blitz to Sadler's Wells by Gillian Lynne
At eight years old, Gill Pyrke was driving her parents crazy, as she couldn't sit still and was nicknamed wriggle-bottom. Her mum took her to see the family GP and told him in great detail how annoying she was. The doctor asked if he could talk to Gill alone and put on some music. She started to dance around and climbed on to his desk. He prescribed ballet classes. She started off in a Bromley dance class where one of her classmates was later to be the famous ballerina Beryl Grey. This story is lovely and funny, and has lots of elements of a dream story, yet is told in a very down to earth style which makes it very convincing. The same could be said of the whole of Gillian Lynne's memoir of her early years, starting out on a brilliant career in dance. Full review...
You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes by Jermaine Jackson
It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson in the two years since his sudden passing will be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge of his life and death, there will surely be few if any to rival this account by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve Dennis. Full review...
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
I saw the BBC's 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit' a semi-autobiographical account of Winterson's childhood. This book's title is equally memorable and unique and we learn that it's a line Mrs Winterson said to the young Jeanette. Full review...
