==Autobiography==
{{newreview
|author=Chinua Achebe
|title=The Education of a British-Protected Child
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=This book is a collection of autobiographical essays by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, whose best known work is the novel Things Fall Apart, published in 1958. Topics covered include Nigerian, Biafran and Igbo history and culture, African literature and the legacy of colonialism in his country and the rest of Africa. Some of the essays are taken from guest lectures at universities around the world and conference papers, and others are written for this book, particularly many of the more personal pieces about Achebe's family.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142598</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gabriel Weston
We would rather walk a mile when it's raining cats and dogs than knock on a neighbours' door asking for a cup of sugar. Maybe that's just me, but look around you - pregnant women struggle to get a seat on the train, 12-year olds get accidentally shot in a supermarket lane, and it's acceptable to throw a tantrum over wrong hair colour.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863223974</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Worth
|title=Farewell To The East End
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I am interested in social history and, as a mother, the job of midwives fascinates me. Combining these two subjects, ''Farewell to the East End'' is a riveting read. The author Jennifer Worth was a midwife and nurse, working with the nuns at Nonnatus House in the East End of London and this volume (her third book on this topic) covers the 1950s.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297844652</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Amy Dickinson
|title=The Mighty Queens of Freeville
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=If you're a reader of ''The Chicago Tribune'' then Amy Dickinson will be a familiar name; for those of us on the other side of the pond (and not the one at Chicago's back door) it's a name that's vaguely familiar but not one which you can readily place. Amy was the replacement for Ann Landers, probably the most influential American woman of the late twentieth century and the most widely read agony aunt of her age with an estimated ninety million readers. So, what was it about Amy Dickinson which propelled her into a job which must have been a dream and a nightmare combined? In ''The Mighty Queens of Freeville'' we meet Amy, her daughter Emily and the women of Amy's family who were their support.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340962607</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ruth Maier, Jamie Bulloch (Translator) and Jan Erik Vold (Editor)
|title=Ruth Maier's Diary: A Young Girl's Life Under Nazism
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I was looking forward to reading Ruth Maier's Diary as I am interested in the history surrounding World War Two and its victims and survivors. I am especially fascinated by social history and how the lives of ordinary people were affected by events beyond therir control.
Ruth was born in 1920 and died on arrival in Auschwitz in 1942, aged only twenty-two. She was born in Austria and lived there with her parents and sister, Judith. But in 1939, life there was becoming much harder for Jews, so Judith was sent to England and Ruth to Norway, where she lived with the Strom family in Lillestrom.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552141</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rania Al-Baz
|title=Disfigured: A Saudi Woman's Story of Triumph over Violence
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Throughout her life Rania Al-Baz has been an unusual woman. She was married off by her father when she was still at school to a man she hardly knew and was the only married pupil, forced to conform to the Saudi Arabian traditions of putting her husband first in all things but still expected to keep up with her school work. Pregnancy forced her to give up on her schooling but the marriage failed and Rania returned to her father. It might have been expected that she would fade quietly into the home, but in a most unusual step she became the smiling face on a Saudi television programme. No woman had ever been a news anchor before and it was only to be expected that there would be plenty of men wanting to marry her.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844370755</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=William Fiennes
|title=The Music Room
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=William Fiennes grows up in a castle (Broughton Castle, in fact - but we're not told directly which one). It sounds a dream upbringing - a large library, chances of ice-skating round the moat, film crews dropping in to record TV and heritage cinema, a host of culture and nature at hand. But like so many castles of fiction there is a bogeyman hampering out and out joy. In this case it is William's oldest brother, Richard.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330444409</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Pritchard
|title=Shooting the Cook
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=David Pritchard would have you believe that he was a bumbling TV producer and that he, almost by accident, discovered two men who would go on to become celebrity chefs. The first, Keith Floyd, was a revelation to viewers as he slurped a glass (or two) of wine, said exactly what you thought he shouldn't have said and cooked amazing food in one exotic location after another. After the stultifying programmes made by the likes Fanny Craddock he was a breath of fresh air and like or loathe him there was no way that you could be ambivalent. The second man, Rick Stein, was an entirely different, er, kettle of fish. Quiet, thoughtful and decidedly more erudite – it was difficult to imagine two more diverse personalities, but he brought out the best of both and made programmes which stay in the mind years later.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007278306</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Emmanuel Jal
|title=War Child: A Boy Soldier's Story
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Emmanuel Jal, internationally successful rap artist, spent his childhood as a solider in his native Sudan. He has written his story in order to help those children who are still fighting, and those who have managed to get away. There are a number of books about the Sudan by western aid workers and journalists, who do, I am sure, write fluently and passionately about the horror of Darfur. This is the first book that I have read which tells the story of war from the point of view of a small boy carrying an AK-47, a gun taller than he is himself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700050</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Mullin
|title=A View from the Foothills
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Chris Mullin's diaries cover the period from July 1999 to May 2005 during which time he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, for the Department for International Development and after a period on the back benches also at the Foreign Office. As he says, there will be no shortage of memoirs from those who have occupied the Olympian Heights. In A View from the Foothills he offers a refreshingly different perspective – that of a man at the lowest levels of government who's party to what's happening further up the hillside and down on the plains.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846682231</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rosalind Penfold
|title=Dragonslippers: This is What an Abusive Relationship Looks Like
|rating=5
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=So, a five star book where we can predict the entire plot, and at times foretell just what people in it say. It's a damning indictment of things that that is even possible.
This book lives by its subtitle – ''this is what an abusive relationship looks like''. Rosalind meets a man who seems nigh-on perfect – they seem to fall in love with ease, and she gets on very well with his four children from an earlier marriage. Then odd occurrences start to happen – he declares her work getting in his way, he possibly drinks a bit too much, he sees flirting in her shop-talk with other men. And things escalate and escalate, and – you know every stage. She suffers a guilt trip, before suffering physical violence, discovering affairs, getting back with him, then finding the right kind of help.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007216882</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Sally Brampton
|title=Shoot the Damn Dog
|rating=5
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=There's a stigma attached to mental illness. If you have cancer you can tell the world about it and expect its sympathy. If you have depression it's seen as a character flaw and one about which you had best keep quiet, pull yourself together and get on with things the way that normal people have to. And it's this cloak of shame and secrecy which has the dual effect of pushing people further into depression and dissuading them from seeking the help which they so desperately need. Sally Brampton has set out to blast away this stigma by telling her own story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747572453</amazonuk>
}}
