Difference between revisions of "Newest Biography Reviews"

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[[Category:Biography|*]]
 
[[Category:Biography|*]]
 
[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
 
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{{newreview
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|title=Victoria: A Life
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|author=A N Wilson
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Biography
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|summary=Every few years, it seems, we are presented with another generously-sized biography of Queen Victoria.  How many times can another author follow Elizabeth Longford, Stanley Weintraub, or Christopher Hibbert to name but three, produce 500 pages or more and still say something new about her?  Can the blurb’s claim that this shows us the sovereign ‘as she’s never been seen before’ really be justified?  Fortunately it can, for even more than a century after her death, there is still new material from previously unseen sources to add to what we already know about her.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848879563</amazonuk>
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}}
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{{newreview
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Lives of the Famous and the Infamous: Everything You Need To Know About Everyone Who Mattered
 
|title=The Lives of the Famous and the Infamous: Everything You Need To Know About Everyone Who Mattered
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|summary=As a book reviewer there are certain people whom I hold in high regard and one of these is John Freeman.  Not yet forty he has an enviable record as an editor to some of the big names in literature and it seems that every book of note for a decade and a half has been greeted by his review.  Don't be misled by the title ''How to Read a Novelist'' - this isn't a guide to literary criticism, but a collection of Freeman's interviews with eminent authors.  There are fifty six in total, ranging from literary giants such as Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Gunter Grass and Kazuo Ishiguro through to popular crime fiction writers such as Donna Leon.
 
|summary=As a book reviewer there are certain people whom I hold in high regard and one of these is John Freeman.  Not yet forty he has an enviable record as an editor to some of the big names in literature and it seems that every book of note for a decade and a half has been greeted by his review.  Don't be misled by the title ''How to Read a Novelist'' - this isn't a guide to literary criticism, but a collection of Freeman's interviews with eminent authors.  There are fifty six in total, ranging from literary giants such as Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Gunter Grass and Kazuo Ishiguro through to popular crime fiction writers such as Donna Leon.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472109376</amazonuk>
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472109376</amazonuk>
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Inside The Centre: The Life of J Robert Oppenheimer
 
|author=Ray Monk
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=Thinking back to the early 1960s, Bertrand Russell, the subject of another prize winning biography by Ray Monk, was frequently seen on black and white television declaring his concerns over Nuclear Weapons. He stated, 'Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.' For nearly seventy years, mankind has wondered in the words of Sting, 'How can I save my boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?' As concerns about nuclear proliferation in relation to Iraq, Pakistan and North Korea escalate it is salutary to return to a thorough biography of the man, known as the father of the bomb, that felt a deep and urgent need to be at the centre and to belong, J Robert Oppenheimer.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099433532</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}

Revision as of 12:05, 14 September 2014

Victoria: A Life by A N Wilson

4.5star.jpg Biography

Every few years, it seems, we are presented with another generously-sized biography of Queen Victoria. How many times can another author follow Elizabeth Longford, Stanley Weintraub, or Christopher Hibbert to name but three, produce 500 pages or more and still say something new about her? Can the blurb’s claim that this shows us the sovereign ‘as she’s never been seen before’ really be justified? Fortunately it can, for even more than a century after her death, there is still new material from previously unseen sources to add to what we already know about her. Full review...

The Lives of the Famous and the Infamous: Everything You Need To Know About Everyone Who Mattered by The Week

4.5star.jpg Biography

To describe a book as unputdownable is a pretty bold claim to make. Jeremy O'Grady, editor-in-chief of The Week does just that in the foreword to The Lives of the Famous and the Infamous, a collection of obituaries from the weekly magazine. Thankfully, his bold judgement is largely spot on.

For those unfamiliar, The Week collates the best offerings from print media outlets around the world, condenses them into smaller chunks, adds a little of its own commentary and creates a highly concise and entertaining look at the news. Full review...

Golden Parasol by Wendy Law-Yone

5star.jpg History

If you look her up Wendy Law-Yone is described as a Burmese-born American author. That Burmese-born American might be an accurate description of her current citizenship, but it barely hints at the ethnic mix of her heritage, nor of her personal closeness (through her father) to her original homeland's struggle for freedom and democracy. Full review...

The Art of Neil Gaiman by Hayley Campbell

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

An early Neil Gaiman book was all about Douglas Adams, and came out at the time he had a success with a book of his own regarding definitions of concepts that had previously not had a specific word attached. Gaiman himself is one of those concepts. I know what a polyglot is, and a polymath – but there should be a word for someone like Gaiman, who can write anything and everything he seems to want – a whimsical family-friendly picture book, a behemoth of modern fantasy, an all-ages horror story, something with a soupcon of sci-fi or with a factor of the fable. He can cross genres – and to some extent just leave them behind as unnecessary, as well as cross format – he was mastering the lengthy, literary graphic novel just as 'real' books were festering in his creativity, and songs and poems were just appearing here and there. So he is pretty much who you think of as regards someone who can turn his hands to anything he wishes. He is a poly-something, then, or just omni-something else. Full review...

A Corner of Paradise: A love story (with the usual reservations) by Brian Thompson

5star.jpg Biography

In the early seventies Brian Thompson met Elizabeth North, both of them part of failing marriages which would have died without any intervention on their parts. They became friends, they fell in love but they never felt the need to marry and would be together until Liz's death in 2010 at the age of seventy eight. Both are authors - Thompson would maintain that North was the better writer - and North would perhaps have said that she should have made that clear. A Corner of Paradise tells the story - not of the homes they lived in - but of the joy of their relationship. Full review...

Grace: Her Lives - Her Loves: The startling royal exposé by Robert Lacey

4star.jpg Biography

Twenty-five years before another so-called fairytale royal romance which turned out to be anything but, one of America’s most beloved screen goddesses crossed the Atlantic and married into the principality of Monaco. The ceremony in 1956 was hailed as the wedding of the year, but like the later and similar event, it was not the happiest of unions. Full review...

One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rainforest by Wade Davis

4.5star.jpg Travel

As someone who has always enjoyed learning about the Amazon, and with plans to travel to South America next year, this book practically screamed at me to be reviewed. And, although a little tough going and long-winded in parts, I'm glad I had the opportunity to get lost in Davis' incredible work of non-fiction. Difficult to describe in terms of genre, this book combines history, politics, science, botany and culture. It is delivered through a biographical account of Davis' own travels and as a memoir to Richard Evans Schultes, an ethnobotanist well known for his work and travels in the Amazon and Wade Davis' highly regarded mentor. Full review...

Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and Her World by Stefan Kornelius

4star.jpg Biography

You have to admire the lady, this rather awkward and shy daughter of a staunch Lutheran pastor who himself had been born as a Polish Catholic. His daughter studied with such intelligence and application that soon brought her academic success particularly in Russian and finally in Quantum Chemistry. At the age of 26, she obtained her doctorate and - in passing, it rather seems - her first husband, the physicist Ulrike Merkel. Her rise to power was rapid and took place through the period in which the DDR collapsed as Russian policy under Gorbachev changed. Along with a wry and dry sense of humour Angela Merkel’s personality is the embodiment of the characteristic known in German as fleissig - hardworking, sedulous, diligent and assiduous. Full review...

Blazing Star: The Life and Times of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester by Alexander Larman

4star.jpg Biography

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was the ultimate 'live fast, die young' icon of the Stuart age, the seventeenth-century embodiment of 'Hope I die before I get old'. Restoration dandy, satirist and pornographic poet, he died a lingering death at the age of 33, racked by venereal disease and alcoholism. If he is remembered at all these days, except by those familiar with the history or literature of the age, it is as the James Dean or the Keith Moon of his day, a hellraiser whose poetry was heavily suppressed for many years by the censors. In fact much of his verse was not published under his name until long after his death, and as most of it was only circulated in manuscript form during his lifetime and a good deal destroyed by his mother after his death, it is uncertain how much does still survive. Full review...

Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France by Stephen Clarke

4star.jpg Biography

Although he was Anglo-German by birth, so Stephen Clarke suggests, King Edward VII was very much a Parisian by nature. As we would expect from the author of several lighthearted books on our Gallic neighbours, including ‘1000 Years of Annoying the French’, this is not the most weighty or solemn biography of the King you will ever find, but it is certainly an entertaining, racy gallop through the life of its subject. Full review...

Josephine: Desire, Ambition, Napoleon by Kate Williams

4star.jpg Biography

Until reading this biography, it had never really occurred to me just how shadowy a figure the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the best-known European rulers of the age, really was. It may be common knowledge that her name was Josephine, but few of us perhaps really know anything of the woman behind the name. Full review...

The Devonshires: The Story of a Family and a Nation by Roy Hattersley

4star.jpg Biography

According to the back of this book, ‘the story of the Devonshires is the story of Britain’. That’s an extravagant claim, but it contains more than a germ of truth. Certainly one would be hard-pushed to find an aristocratic, non-royal British family who has more consistently been central to our history since medieval times, as this detailed chronicle demonstrates. From the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII presided over in part by Sir William Cavendish, father of the first Earl, to the big business that their ancestral home Chatsworth House in Derbyshire has now become, the somewhat inaccurately geographically-named Devonshires have often been, or helped to, contribute to, part of the fabric of Britain’s past and present. Full review...

The Life of Rebecca Jones by Angharad Price

5star.jpg Biography

A newly-married couple make their way home from the chapel, riding on a horse-drawn cart as it winds its way round familiar country lanes towards the beautiful valley of Maesglasau. The horse pauses atop a hill and the valley spreads out before them: 'the vessel of their marriage'. The centuries-old stone farmhouse in the crook of the mountain is to be their homestead; a sturdy, silent witness to the tragedy and joy that is an intrinsic part of the fabric of family life. Full review...

Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation by Andrew Lycett

4star.jpg Biography

Wilkie Collins has come down to us as the chief exponent of the Victorian ‘sensation novel’. This was the genre of story written specifically to expose deep-rooted domestic or family secrets, uncovering illegitimacy, bigamy or other irregular activities by supposedly respectable citizens leading outwardly normal, uneventful lives. There were mysteries, deceptions, betrayals, evil characters and good innocent ones. Measured by these standards, he led a ‘sensational’ life himself. When not writing novels, short stories, plays or articles for journals in order to earn a living, this apparently fine upstanding bachelor maintained two households, two mistresses, and children at the same time – and managed to keep them a secret from the public who would doubtless have been scandalized to know the truth. Full review...

Four Sisters:The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport

5star.jpg Biography

A few years ago, Helen Rappaport wrote and published Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, a painstaking, chilling account of the final days and death of the last Tsar of Russia and his family. To a certain extent this biography is a prequel to that volume, an account of the short lives of OTMA, as they referred to themselves – the Tsar’s daughters Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia. Full review...

The Holy Fox: The Life of Lord Halifax by Andrew Roberts

4.5star.jpg Biography

Of all the British nearly-Prime Ministers Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, must be unique. He was the one who came closest to assuming the mantle only to find the job denied him, and had he done so, on him Britain’s destiny would have depended. For he was the man whom several confidently expected, and many wanted, to take over after the resignation of Neville Chamberlain during the dark days of May 1940. Full review...

The Boys In The Boat: An Epic Journey to the Heart of Hitler's Berlin by Daniel James Brown

4.5star.jpg Biography

You see, Jesse Owens had it easy – all he had to do was run fast. Alright, he did have to face unknown hardship, heinous prejudice at home and abroad, and make sure he was fast enough to outdo the rest of his compatriots then the world's best to win gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but others who wished to do the same had to do more. People such as those rowers in the coxed eights squad – people such as young Joe Rantz. He certainly had to face hardship, the prejudice borne by those in the moneyed east coast yacht clubs against an upstart from the NW USA, and when he got to compete he had to use so many more muscles, and operate at varying tempi, with the temperament of the weather and water against him, all in perfect synchronicity with seven other beefcakes. Despite rowing being the second greatest ticket at those Games, Joe's story is a lot less well known, and probably a lot more entertaining. Full review...

The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent by Robert A Caro

5star.jpg Autobiography

It's only a matter of days since I finished listening to The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, the first part of Robert A Caro's definitive work on the President and despite having just spent over forty hours on the book I wanted to learn more. I was torn though - the second book in a series is not often as good as the first and it struck me that these might not be the most exciting years in Johnson's life. Was this book going to be the link which took us on to the more exciting times? Not a bit of it. Full review...

The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert A Caro

5star.jpg Biography

Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th President of the United States, preceded by John F Kennedy and succeeded by Richard Nixon, with both being remembered most for the way they left office. His five-year term in office was overshadowed at the start by the Kennedy assassination and increasingly blighted by the debacle which was Vietnam, but there was something about Johnson which always intrigued me: how does a poor boy from Texas hill country without an exceptional (or even 'good') education become president of the United States? 'The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power' tells you all that you need to know. Full review...

Born in Siberia by Tamara Astafieva, Michael Darlow and Debbie Slater

4.5star.jpg Autobiography

I tend to shy away from reviewing book titles, but this time it seems appropriate – here it's a title that doesn't tell you the half of the story. As much as Tamara Astafieva was born in Siberia, and returned there several times, for many different reasons and with many very different outcomes, this is much more of a picture of the Soviet Union as we in Britain think of it – Moscow, a bit of Saint Petersburg, and little else. That's not a fault – and again it's not half of the story. The story here is so complex, so rich with detail and incident, and itself came about in such an unusual way, that any summary of the book has its work cut out in defining its many qualities. Full review...

The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

3.5star.jpg Biography

Gabriele d’Annunzio was a strange and perhaps fortunately unique character, a kind of 20th century Renaissance man who almost defies posterity to pigeonhole him. At various times he was a poet, novelist, dramatist, journalist, adventurer, self-styled demagogue and philanderer. Although he lost several friends during the First World War, as well as the sight of one eye when his plane was shot down, he had a passion for war, seeing bloodshed as manly and death in battle as glorious self-sacrifice. He had the dodgiest of moral compasses, and yet was hardly the Adonis he believed himself to be. One French courtesan who firmly rebuffed his physical advances later called him ‘a frightful gnome with red-rimmed eyes and no eyelashes, no hair, greenish teeth, bad breath and the manners of a mountebank’. Had he been alive today, he would have probably been an instant celebrity and media personality with a very short shelf-life. One half Jeremy Clarkson, one half Russell Brand, one might say. Full review...

Alfred: Queen Victoria's Second Son by John Van der Kiste

4star.jpg Biography

Prince Alfred was the second son of Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. At the time of his birth he was second in line to the throne after his brother, the Prince of Wales and was generally known within the family as Affie. In his early teens he joined the Royal Navy - at his own request - and whilst his family and status was undoubtedly no disadvantage to him, he worked hard and had a genuine talent for the navy, eventually receiving his Admiral's baton and visiting all five continents in the course of his service. He was created Duke of Edinburgh (along with various other titles) by the queen. His marriage - to Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia - was not a happy union, with his wife being not well-liked in society and obsessed by her precedence. They had six children (one of whom was stillborn) but only one son - 'young Affie' who committed suicide at the age of twenty four. Full review...

The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink by Olivia Laing

4star.jpg Biography

Coming from a family with an alcoholic background, Olivia Laing became fascinated by the idea of why and how some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature were written by those with a drink problem. The list soon became a long one – Dylan Thomas, Raymond Chandler, Jack London, Jean Rhys, to name but a few, instantly came to mind. In the spring of 2011 she crossed the Atlantic to take a trip across the USA, from New York City and New Orleans to Chicago and Seattle by hired car and train, in the course of which she took a close look at the link between creativity and alcohol which inspired the work of six authors, namely F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Taking her title from a character in Williams’s play ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ who says he is taking a trip to echo spring, an euphemism for the liquor cabinet, she travels to the places which were pivotal in their often overlapping lives and work. Full review...

Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz by Thomas Harding

5star.jpg Biography

This dual biography concerns, as the title makes clear, two men. One was from an inherently German, rich Jewish family – they had a powerboat so he could waterski on the lake at their country cottage – who fled the rise of the Nazis early in the 1930s, and got away moderately lightly, only losing properties and a large and successful medical career. The other was from an inherently German family, who signed up for First World War service before his age, but only really wanted to be a farmer and family man, yet who ended up running probably history's worst slaughterhouse. Both had a connection and a shared destiny that was largely unknown before this book was researched, there's a chance that both of them had the blood of one man and only one man directly on their hands from WWII service, and both of them – again, as the title makes clear – are given the dignity of the familiar, first name throughout this incredible book. Full review...

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

5star.jpg Biography

Penelope Fitzgerald came from an earnest and renowned academic family, the Knoxes, which included several prominent clerics; her grandfather was the Bishop of Manchester. A considerable biographer herself, she wrote a book on the Knox brothers, these included two Oxford pastors (one of whom, Ronald Knox, converted to Catholicism, was famous as a biblical translator and whilst chaplain at Trinity College became a mentor to the future prime minister, Harold Macmillan), a top Bletchley cryptographic analyst and Penelope's own eminent father, 'Evoe' who was editor of Punch. Fitzgerald wrote prolifically from childhood and fulfilled some of these high expectations by gaining a brilliant First at Somerville. Graduating in 1938, she was already known for her membership of the smart set, for her student journalism and a reticent, indeed peremptory manner. Women could not actually graduate at Oxford until a statute was passed in 1920. Hence she was amongst Oxford's early women graduates. Her striking appearance within the smart set earned her the nickname of the blonde bombshell. Full review...

How to Read a Novelist: Conversations with Writers by John Freeman

4.5star.jpg Biography

As a book reviewer there are certain people whom I hold in high regard and one of these is John Freeman. Not yet forty he has an enviable record as an editor to some of the big names in literature and it seems that every book of note for a decade and a half has been greeted by his review. Don't be misled by the title How to Read a Novelist - this isn't a guide to literary criticism, but a collection of Freeman's interviews with eminent authors. There are fifty six in total, ranging from literary giants such as Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Gunter Grass and Kazuo Ishiguro through to popular crime fiction writers such as Donna Leon. Full review...