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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michele Monro1788360702|title=Matt MonroCharles, The Alternative Prince: The Singer's SingerAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=4.5

|summary=In terms of British chart statistics and record salesFor over forty years, Matt Monro never quite fulfilled his full potential. When measured against the achievements Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of contemporary ballad singers like Tom Jones alternative medicine and Engelbert Humperdinck, he fell some way shortcomplementary therapies. Yet the former Terry Parsons was a regular fixture on the light entertainment circuit''Charles, and overseas, particularly in Latin America and The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one of BritainPrince's most successful exports everopinions, beliefs and at one point he was aims against the biggest selling artist in Spainbackground of the scientific evidence. His idol Frank Sinatra, There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to whom he was often comparedapply evidence-based, often said that Matt was the only British singer he ever really listened logical reasoning tohis ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848566182</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Caroline Moorehead 1739805100|title=Dancing to Loving the Precipice Enemy: Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French Revolution|rating=4|genre=History|summary=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 Building bridges in a more detailed record than the subject of this biography, Lucie-Henriette Dillon, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du Pin.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099490528</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=A.Roger Ekirch |title=Birthright: The True Story That Inspired Kidnapped|rating=4|genre=History|summary=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 time of which can point to the saga of James Annesley for inspiration.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393066150</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewwar|author=John Van der Kiste|title=William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious RevolutionAndrew March

|summary=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 ''meaningfulLoving the Enemy'' period – tells the Victorian era. The importance quite extraordinary story of William and Mary was completely overlooked author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in favour of a quick mention the early days of the fact that William wasn't Nazi regime in direct line of succession to the throne 1930s. Fred, a sensitive and Mary thoughtful man, had never wanted to marry him some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the first placetime. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as Fred'tabless attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah BakewellWill Brooker|title=How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer The Truth About Lisa Jewell

|summary='Chance … really Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the way things happen,most successful British authors I' wrote Howard Beckve never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the Chicago School sociologistthousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. I visit Bookbag Towers This book starts with few preconceived ideas about the next book for reviewtwo meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. I'll allow myself to fall for a quirky title or appealing coverThe meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, despite only a smattering of interest in her anecdote about cup cakes, the subject matter. Just occasionally this waywords of her latest book she was reciting, I stumble on and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a golden nugget so fascinating and wellget-written that up never commonly worn at the author events I realise how lucky I am get to be attend), but pulled Brooker, a reviewerprofessor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. IBrooker decides he'm so pleased d like nothing more than to have chanced upon this inviting biography of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701178922</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|follow her through a year in the published author=David Baldwin|title=The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Due to the small amount of surviving personal sourceslife, any book which purports working to be make a biography success of a 15-century subject is almost inevitably going to be more a 'life the latest title, and times' than a lifestruggling with the next in line. In the case of women who were sisters but not sovereigns or consorts themselvesJewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the lack of data will be even more acuteresult.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0750950765</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue RoeMartha Leigh|title=The Private Lives of the ImpressionistsInvisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=In the early 1860s Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a group of young Parisian artists were keen to exhibit their workslightly eccentric, despite opposition from the official art worldimmediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Their protests at being spurned by the SalonHer father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the French equivalent complete correspondence of the Royal Academy, resulted in their paintings being shown at the rather disparaginglyphilosopher Jean-named Salon des RefusésJacques Rousseau, where crowds and critics came to view - and jeerhis life's work. When they held the first of their own exhibitions Her mother is a few years later, one reviewer said that they 'seem to have declared war on beauty', while another assured his readers that concert pianist who practises for hours every canvas must have been day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the work practicalities of some practical joker who had dipped his brushes life. There is love in paint, smeared it onto yards of canvas, and signed the result with several different nameshouse but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099458349</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Will BirchPolly Barton|title=Ian Dury: The Definitive BiographyFifty Sounds

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Ian Dury was always one of Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the most individual, even contrary characters in question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the musical worldhadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. In a branch of showbiz where people often relied on good looks as a short cut to stardomI may get there later this year, he was no oil paintingbut I am not hopeful. During the pub rock era, he and his groupAnd like Barton, I don't know the Blockheads, ploughed a lonely furrow which owed more answer to jazz-funk than rockthe question ''why Japan?'n'roll, and his songs extolled the virtues She explains her feelings in respect of characters from Billericay or Plaistow rather than those from Memphis or California. Alongside the young punk rock upstarts with whom he competed for inches question in the rock pressfirst essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, he was comparatively middle-aged. As if that was not enoughamong other things, in his own words childhood illness had left him a permanent the sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself'raspberry ripple'.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0283071036</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark SimpsonFrederic Gros|title=Alastair Sim: The Star A Philosophy of Scrooge and the Belles of St Trinian'sWalking|rating=45|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=The mere mention of Alastair Sim conjures I confess I picked this one up visions of pictures made during from the 1950s when a more gentle humour was the order library in my pre-lockdown forage of the dayrandom stuff. Yet Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the man hated pages I have marked and did his best return to avoid publicity, claiming that the person the public saw on screen revealed all that anybody needed its varying wisdom when I need to know about him. Some books draw you in slowly. How he would have fared twenty years later This one had me in the age of first two pages, wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a more intrusive press, one cannot but wondersport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0752453726</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert CrawfordSharon Blackie|title=The Bard: Robert Burns - a biographyIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=If Shakespeare I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is Englandsetting out to buy my own copy before I's own Bard, ve finished reading the comparatively shortlived Robert Burns – who lived and worked nearly two centuries later – fulfils the equivalent role in Scottish iconography more than adequatelyone I've borrowed. Yet as this very thorough biography demonstrates, there is much more I want to the man than the wordsmith of avoid clichés like 'powerful'Auld Lang Syne' and inspiring'Wee, sleekit, cowrin', timlife-changing'rous beastie– although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for a reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844139301</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Linda Porter0241446732|title=Katherine the QueenOur House is on Fire: The Remarkable Life Scenes of Katherine Parra Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Katherine Parr The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was the last an opera singer and arguably Svante Thunberg took on most of the most fortunate parenting of King Henry VIII's six wivestheir two daughters. Apart from Anne of ClevesThen eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, the speedily divorced 'Flanders mare'then nine years old, she struggled with what was the only one to survive himhappening. And while all six of the queens consort remain rather shadowy figuresIn such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, this biography gives it became clear to the impression family that she was probably the most intelligent and wellthey were ''burned-out people on a burned-rounded personality of them allout planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230710395</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Clayton0648684806|title=Clara Colby: The Richard Beckinsale StoryInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=A generation The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably knows Richard Beckinsale only from repeats determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on the UK Gold TV channelsher and saw that she received a good education, both in and from occasional mentions out of school. She was the only child in the context of 'how great he would have been if only…' household and her childhood was glorious. In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the 30mid-year-old sitcom favourite west of the United States and life was hard, as a rising major star of Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the 80s who family. Clara would blossom into one of the great all-round stage actorsonly know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. One year laterAs the eldest girl, he a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was deada rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752454404</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der Kiste1789017977|title=Sons, Servants Ronnie and Statesmen: The Men in Queen VictoriaHilda's Romance: Towards a New Life|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Like the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have been written about Queen Victoria, but John Van der Kiste has taken the unusual step of using the men in her life to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her life, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'son, servant or statesman' as promised by the title of the book, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always have a man in her life who would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0750937882</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Maureen Emerson|title=Escape to Provence|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=In the 1920s two women, one American, one British, settled in the south of France, both for different reasons. Elisabeth Starr had left her home in Philadelphia after an unhappy childhood and the death, possibly suicide, of her fiancé, a nephew of the American President. Drawn to Paris, 'the chosen European city for the sophisticated and well-heeled of the New World', she worked as a nurse during the Great War, then moved to Provence where she made her home in an ancient stone house, the Castello, and took French citizenship. Winifred (Peggy) Fortescue was the wife of the Royal Librarian at Windsor, who retired in 1926 with a knighthood and became a renowned (though hardly successful in financial terms) military historian. After the fall of the pound, it was hard for them to make ends meet in England, and they were drawn to find a property in Provence partly by the lifestyle, partly by a favourable exchange rate.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955832101</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewII|author=Sushila Anand |title=Daisy: The Lives and Loves of the Countess of WarwickWendy Williams

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=Born Daisy Maynard in 1861, Ronnie Williams was the Countess son of Warwick lived a colourful life by any standardsThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. She was notoriously promiscuous, a spendthrift who did There's some doubt as to whether or not hesitate they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to try have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and provoke he might well have shaved a royal scandal to shore up her parlous finances, and although she relished her lifestyle to the full, she spent several few years fighting wholeheartedly for the pioneer socialists in Britainoff his age.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749909773</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michael Lewis|title=The Blind Side|rating=4|genre=Sport|summary=I think my husband was For a little taken aback to see me curled up on while, the sofa engrossed in a book about American Football. I suppose I should admit that I didn't actually know it family was going quite well-to be about American Football. Well, I knew it was about a boy who ''played'' American Football, -do but I'd thought that was just going to be the background story, you know, like disaster struck in ''Jerry Maguire''. So the first chapter seemed 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to go on and on forever, and I thought my head might pop from reading about quarterbacks and blind sides and plays and offence and defence and running statistics...but then somehow I stumbled adjust to the real heart of the story; the story of Michael Oher, a young African-American very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from the slums of Memphis whose his father was never around, and whose mother was a drug addict his need to be well-turned-out and lost this would stay with him to social services throughout his life. He joined the army at a young ageeighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039333838X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Billy HopkinsPatti Smith|title=Tommy's WorldYear of the Monkey

|summary=I came to this biography having read three On the coast of HardySanta Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's novelswords, two quite recently''Anything is possible: after all, and some it's the year of the monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of his poetrySanta Cruz in solitude, but knowing very little about him as she reflects on a person. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably to year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in these pagesAmerica.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenifer Roberts1912242052|title=The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of PortugalO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined first person to become walk the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married mountains alone, not because he had to her uncle Infante Pedrofor work, seventeen years her senioras a miner, she had six children (outliving all but one of them)quarryman, and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious womanshepherd or pack-horse driver, she had the misfortune but because he wanted to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church for pleasure and state were vying for supremacyadventure. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, His rapturous encounters with a humanitarian approach to state affairstheir natural beauty, she was no Queen Elizabethand its literary consequences, no Catherine changed our view of the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantlyworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095455891X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham McCannGraff_Find|title=Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-ThomasFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=When I was in my early teensBen Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, he didn't take much notice of it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five-star British comedy film around. He was certainly one of At the most recognizable characters age of all with his gap-toothed grin24, cigarette holder and inimitable Graff didn'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best t realise the gravity of all, the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>pages he was holding.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stella Tillyard 1789016304|title=War and Love: A Royal Affair: George III family's testament of anguish, endurance and His Troublesome Siblingsdevotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=45

|summary=King George III Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was not the luckiest entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of English sovereigns. America, and Ann Frank'' but then his sons, in realised that order, gave him no end of grief, her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the last few city during the war years of his life , but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were clouded by madnessresistant to German occupation. It is thus often overlooked Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced thatthey would soon be pushed back, before these troubles arose that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to haunt this most conscientious monarchescalate in the way that it did, he also had but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a thankless task in trying to control his siblingsvast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099428563</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tracy Borman 1786893452|title=Elizabeth's Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin QueenUngrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=So many biographies have been written Here in the West, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about the life and times them. But all of England's longest-lived those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and longest reigning sovereign that one might wonder whether there is anything new left almost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to say about her. However Tracy Borman has found an interesting new angle – by telling the story of her life through world and the women closest to hersituations that refugees find themselves in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082264</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Lever|title=Me Cheeta|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Straight It's rare that we find out of the golden age of Hollywood comes journeys from the bitchiest, most revealing memoir from one of its stars. There are scores refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to be settleddo that, stars to be insulted, secrets to be hinted at none too subtley, and lost opportunities to be longed for. Ohin this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the star telling all? Wellmiddle of a revolution in Iran, for those of you who can't tell from the title (or even the picture on the front cover) it's Cheeta fleeing to America as a ten-year- chimpanzee star of the Tarzan filmsold.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007280165</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philippe Auclair 0857058320|title=Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be KingLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=Even today, London ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a remarkable compromise of journey to uncover the old author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the newSpanish Civil War. As Alistair Duncan shows in this volumeManuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the city of Conan Doyle and Holmes has changed – yet not changedbook. There have been a handful of books in the past on 'HolmesHe died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's London', but forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this is dictator. The question at the first centre of its kind this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to place equal emphasis on places associated with be a hero whilst having fought for the detective and his creatorwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312500</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul R Spiring (Editor) 1788037812|title=Bobbles & PlumThe Fraternity of the Estranged: Four Satirical Playlets by Bertram Fletcher Robinson and PG WodehouseThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=POriginally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years.GBut during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Wodehouse needs little if any introductionBetween 1891 and 1908, but Bertram Fletcher Robinson's life and career three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were cut short written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and he is little known outside his connections with Sir Arthur Conan DoyleJohn Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. This set Exploring the margins of satirical playlets society and studying homosexuality was common on which they collaboratedthe European Continent, published but barely talked about in journals between 1904 and 1907 and virtually forgotten sincethe UK, are presented in book form for so the first time. As such they show how the careers publications of both these men were evolvinghugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, particularly while Wodehouse was finding his feet and experimenting with beginning the struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the different facets milestone legalisation of journalism before finding his niche same-sex relationships in comic fiction1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312586</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Wynter Bee and Lucy Clapham Buckland_Zoo|title=People of The Man Who Ate the Day 4Zoo: The Rich and Famous CaricaturedFrank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling

|summary=Have you ever been asked to buy As a book conservationist in aid of a charity and wished that you'd given a donation and not taken Victorian England before the book? Wellterm existed, if you have I'm hoping to persuade you that there are exceptions to every rule and this book in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust is definitely worth the cover price.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954811038</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jeremy Nicholas |title=Idle Thoughts on Jerome K Jerome: A 150th Anniversary Celebration|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Although he Frank Buckland was very much a prolific novelist, short story writer, dramatist and journalist, Jerome Klapka Jerome will always be remembered first and foremost as the author of ''Three Men in a Boat''. This fascinating anthology, published on the 150th anniversary of his birth, reminds us that there was far more to the man than that one admittedly enduring book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956221203</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Richard D Ryder|title=Nelson, Hitler and Diana|rating=4|genre=Popular Science|summary=Was Horatio Nelson, a navy officer ahead of great renown, forever thrusting himself into the limelight, doing it because his mother passed away when he was nine? Was Hitler overly affected by his father dying in a time of paternal disapproval, and a kind of Oedipal reaction to being the man in the house making him suffer when she herself died? And can Diana, Princess of Wales' parents' divorce lead to a claim she was a sufferer of borderline personality disorder?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401662</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Trevor Hamilton |title=Immortal Longings: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian Search for Life After Death|rating=4|genre=Biography |summary=Born in 1843Surgeon, Frederic Myers began his career as a classical lecturer at Cambridge Universitynaturalist, but disliked teaching veterinarian and soon gave it eccentric sums him up in favour of writing poetry and essays in literature. Although his social circle included men such as Gladstone, Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning and Prince Leopold, the most intellectual of Queen Victoria's sons, his books (which are not so well remembered today) might have been his sole claim to fame, had it not been for his passionate curiosity about the meaning of human life. If it had a purpose, he was convinced, it could only be discovered through the study of human experiences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845401239</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul R Spiring (Editor) |title=The World of Vanity Fair - Bertram Fletcher Robinson|rating=5|genre=Biography |summary=Every now and then, you comes across a really sumptuous bookperfectly, where just turning and looking at the pages takes you into another world. Such any biographer is the case immediately presented with this one. ''Vanity Fair'' was a gentler Victorian forerunner of ''Private Eye''. Subtitled, ''A Weekly'' ''Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares'', it appeared between 1868 and 1914. Like the more successful, longer-lasting ''Punch'', it began with radical aspirations, intending ''colourful tale to expose what'' [the editor] ''perceived to be the'' ''vanities of the elite social classes''. However its satire was gently humorous rather than malicious, and almost everybody who was portrayed in its pages was flatteredtell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312535</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Piers DudgeonWilliams_Captain|title=Captivated: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers and the Dark Side Captain Ronald Campbell of Neverland|rating=3.5|genre=Biography |summary=According to D.H. LawrenceBombala Station, J.M. Barrie ''has a fatal touch for those he loves. They die.'' Barrie had an extraordinary fascination with a childlike world of innocence and young boys who never grew up. Had it merely stopped at creating Peter Pan, all well Cambalong: His Military Life and good. Unfortunately this obsession manifested itself in an unhealthy involvement with others, notably the du Maurier family.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520451</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewTimes|author=Emma Charles|title=How Could He Do It?|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Emma Charles was on the edge of thinking that she and her family were doing quite well. They were an ordinary family – mum, dad, two daughters, three dogs, a rabbit and a couple of guinea pigs. Sprinkle in an Open University course for Mum, private schooling for the girls, a nice car in the drive of the nice house, good clothes and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with the way that life was going. Then her fifteen year old daughter, Tamsin, gave her a note, couched in graphic terms, saying that her father had been sexually abusing her for the past five years.In moments the family's life fell apart. Gone were all the certainties, the hopes and the expectations. In came the police, Social Services and Child Protection Officers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090005</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jacqueline Walker|title=Pilgrim State|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=I was intrigued and touched by Jacqueline Walker's beautiful memoir of her childhood in Jamaica and London in the 1960's. This is a book inevitably compared with Andrea Levy's ''Small Island''. It follows similar ground, but the main difference and great strength, is that it's the real narrative of mother and daughter. As a girl I was familiar with areas of London where Jackie Walker lived and heard some members of my family denigrate Caribbean immigrants. From this memoir, I've garnered much about the lived experience of my less advantaged contemporaries.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340960809</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kate Ivor George Williams|title=Becoming Queen

|summary=It's a story which has been told by many authors during In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the last century17th Regiment of Foot. The Victorian age, or at any rate He was in command of the woman who gave her name troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to the eraSydney, came about largely if Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. He was not wholly because of destined to live a crisis of sorts among King George III's family. By long life, dying suddenly at the time his seven surviving sons reached middle ageof 34 at Bangalore, they had managed leaving his widow to produce one legitimate child between them, namely Princess Charlotteraise their two young sons. Her unexpected Edwards' death, and the need for at least some if left his widow in a difficult position: not all of the others to do only did she have their dynastic duty and produce an heir or two, resulted in an undignified mass scramble farm to the altar. Edwardmanage, Duke of Kent won the lottery. It but she was he and his wife, a widow with two small children by her first marriage, whose daughter Victoria became also responsible for the saviour of convicts who worked the royal successionland. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099451824</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Martyn DownerPeacock_mountain|title=Into The Queen's KnightMountain, A Life of Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=The title sounds more indicative of a novel Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by [[:Category:Dorothy Dunnett|Dorothy Dunnett]] or Jean Plaidy than a biography. Then a brief prologue starts the story at the very endit, when Queen Victoria receives and we sell the unexpected news of the death of Sir Howard Elphinstone. An equally myriad lesser-known authors short first chapter gives us a glimpse of the man some thirty years earlier in the thick of battle at the Crimeaas well. Only after that do we 'reach' his birth in 1829. Sometimes rules are meant to be brokenSo while, like most other people I have my favourite genres, and favoured authors, and while, like most other people I read the reviews and it's follow up on what appeals, I also have a good way of introducing this very interesting life. As the husband of his subject's greatthird-great-granddaughter, the author is well qualified string to write itmy reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>055215508X</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=William Coxe and Peter Danckwerts (Editor)|title=Anecdotes of George Frederick Handel and John Christopher Smith|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=Written by the stepson of John Christopher Smith (a friend of Handel and composer in his own right), ''Anecdotes'' is an overview of two men who in their own ways were remarkable. Handel, of course, was a musical genius while Smith was a man of great kindness — a good friend of Coxe's father, he married his widow to ensure she and her children would be cared for.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904799396</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Barney Hoskyns|title=Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Born and raised in Los Angeles, Tom Waits probably enjoys a status comparable to the UK's Richard Thompson. He has never sold out to a mass pop audience, preferring instead to sustain an engagingly low-key career for over 30 years, feted by critics, fellow artists and a cult following while only achieving modest record sales. While his 80s albums 'Swordfishtrombones' and 'Rain Dogs' are regarded as among the finest of the decade, most of his royalties have come through cover versions of his songs. Two, 'Downtown Train' and 'Tom Traubert's Blues', have been Top 10 hits for Rod Stewart, who once said that they paid for the swimming pool in Tom's garden, while in his early days the Eagles gave him a boost by recording 'Ol' 55' on their third album.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571235522</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Victor Schoelcher (Author), Anton de Moresco (Editor), James Lowe (Translator) |title=The Life of Handel|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Although he is probably best remembered for his active role in the abolition of slavery in the French colonies, and as a campaigner for women's rights, Victor Schoelcher was also a noted musicologist. His biography of the composer Handel, first published in 1857, was one of the first scholarly works on the subject, and at the time it was generally regarded as one of the finest portraits of a musician or composer ever written.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904799388</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Iain McCalman|title=Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=A look at Darwin's journey on The Beagle, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184737266X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances Osborne|title=The Bolter|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Life in London just after the Great War must have been jolly, even frightfully good fun, what – for the right (or the wrong?) people. The early 1920s were the years of the bright young things, the men who had been lucky enough to return from the fighting still in one piece, determined to make up for years of tedium in the trenches by whooping it up with the equally pleasure-loving gals barely out of their teens, just as willing to throw morals and discretion to the winds and party round the clock. This was the age when women thought nothing of receiving invited company while in the bath and slowly getting dressed in front of them. One hostess even greeted her guests walking down the staircase of her Belgrave Square mansion wearing a string of the family pearls – and nothing else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084809</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Doris Kearns Goodwin|title=Team of Rivals|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=This hefty tome, the cover tells us, is 'the book that inspired Barack Obama'. For what it's worth, Obama's name appears no less than nine times Move on the cover and spine, while Lincoln's appears only six, and that of the author a mere two.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043725</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Gribbin and Michael White|title=Darwin: A Life in Science|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=This straightforward and likeable biography of Charles Darwin charts the evolution of his theories of evolution, while providing solid insights into the man in the context of his upbringing, education and family life. Importantly, it makes you want to read ''On the Origin of the Species'', acting as a primer for the ideas introduced in that famous volume.  ''Darwin: A Life in Science'' is pitched beautifully for the reader of popular science, yet gives plenty of signposts enabling future study. It also gives a very believable picture of Darwin, based on convincing evidence and without falling into florid psychological speculation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847391494</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michael D Lemonick|title=The Georgian Star: How William [[Newest Business and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=No-one can ever look at the night skies above our heads as Galileo did. The light pollution covering so much of our planet makes it impossible to see nearly as much as he might. Conversely, he would have adored living in a time such as ours – with the technology to show him so much he couldn't see, so much he daren't dream of. Sitting happily between those two extremes was William Herschel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>039306574X</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]