==Biography==
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{{newreview
|author=Cita Stelzer
|title=Dinner with Churchill: The Prime Minister's Tabletop Diplomacy
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=Winston Churchill was never a man to don the hair shirt. A comfortable upbringing in the days when elaborate multiple courses were the done thing imbued in him from an early age a taste for the good things in life, and a bon viveur he remained until the very end. Throughout his life he loved his food, and until near the end of his life, his appetite and digestion remained excellent, whereas many men in their advancing years might have cut back a little.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595422</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Savage
|summary=When I first had a garden I did what I always do with a new project: I turned to books to see what help I could find. There were any number which told me how to do the basics and what I needed to know to make the right decisions. It was rather like cooking only with a few more uncertainties thrown in. Then there were the books which didn't really bother about the basics but provided limitless inspiration. At the head of these writers, if not way out in front, was Christopher Lloyd who gardened throughout his life at Great Dixter, producing colour combinations which stunned and probably one of the greatest gardens of the twentieth century.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845950968</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
|title=Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655344X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Ashdown-Hill
|title=The Last Days of Richard III
|rating=4
|genre=History
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454048</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Edmund de Waal
|title=The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary='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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539551</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Spicer
|title=The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice, Countess de Janze
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847399142</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jonny Steinberg
|title=Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224085662</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Edward Pearce
|title=Pitt the Elder: Man of War
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951433</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tracy Kidder
|title=Mountains Beyond Mountains
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=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. [http://www.pih.org/ Partners In Health], the healthcare organisation he set up with his colleagues, takes this work worldwide.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684315</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Molly Carr
|title=In Search of Dr Watson - A Sherlockian Investigation
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685766</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lindsay Reade
|title=Mr Manchester and the Factory Girl: The Story of Tony and Lindsay Wilson
|rating=4
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654567</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bevis Hillier
|title=The Wit and Wisdom of G K Chesterton
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441179585</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rosamund Bartlett
|title=Tolstoy: A Russian Life
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846681383</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Valerie Benaim and Yves Azeroual
|title=Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni: The True Story
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0907633145</amazonuk>
}}
