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[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> ==Autobiography== <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bill Larkworthy0241636604|title=Doctor LarkThe Trading Game: The Benefits of a Medical EducationA Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Bill Larkworthy If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is a pleasant fellow who has lead an eventfulthe East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but not worldhe had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright -shattering lifeextremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. So at the outset it's probably worth saying He also realised that this self-deprecating tale won't light many literary firesmost rich people expect poor people to be stupid. If fireworks are It was his ability at what you are looking forwas, essentially, search elsewherea card game which got him an internship with Citibank. On the other hand, I always find ordinary people's stories of everyday life fascinating Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as well as providing useful background, or what used to be called 'general knowledge', about other parts of a trader.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1529395224|title=Letting the world. Since my general knowledge Cat Out of the Gulf States is more or less limited to Lawrence Bag: The Secret Life of Arabia a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=3.5|genre=Animals and current news reports, Wildlife|summary=Siôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a little padding wonGP and Rowlands didn't go amisswant to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's life. So yes, I did enjoy When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and was convinced this readwas the job for him. Before long, and I imagine the Saga age group will borrow it in steady numbers from libraries (if they can find one open)he was at Liverpool University. It would make hadn't - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a good present for child. If anything, he'd wanted to be a man of a certain age, which is:|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906852065</amazonuk>professional footballer.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan TitchmarshEdel Rodriguez|title=When I Was Worm: A NipperCuban American Odyssey
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryGraphic Novels|summary=ThereWe's something about Alan Titchmarsh that you canre in childhood, and we't help likingre in Cuba. He's got The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a wry sense saviour of humourthe country, has proven himself a Communist, seems unfailingly positive andnot done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Well, best those hours-long speeches of all, was born in my home town his were kind of Ilkleytaking his time away. You really canOur narrator's family weren't get much better than thatin the happiest of places here, now can you? 'When I Was A Nipper' is a look not just at his life in an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the fifties country demanded (although there ''is'' a lot about himespecially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) but about and the way that things were then. There's an unspoken question about what we can learn from how we lived then father being watched and watched, and how we can apply this to our lives todaynot liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. It's pure nostalgia only lightly seasoned The mother gets the couple jobs with the reality party to ease some of outside privies and harsh working conditions.the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184990152X</amazonuk>1474616720
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Margaret Powell1035025299|title=Below Stairs: The Bestselling Memoirs of a 1920s Kitchen MaidWent to London, Took the Dog|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Nina Stibbe is returning to London for a sabbatical after being away for twenty years. She's been at Victoria'Below Stairs'' was first published s smallholding in 1968, and itLeicestershire which isn's no exaggeration t all that conducive to claim Margaret Powell as the trailblazer for the memoir genre. This book encouraged hundreds of autobiographies of common life, and spawned a whole generation of tv programmes. In its vernacular and popularist waywriting, it was probably as influential as Mayhewthere's 'London Labour and the London Poor'. Before her, only famous people wrote their stories, and that without too much regard for realityalways something smallholding happening - as you might expect. Unless they were literary writers, achievements were downplayed and emotions hidden away, in the stilted style The other side of the British stiff upper lip. Not so Margaret Powell, who became a publishing sensation decision was sealed when she blasted through with a robust Voice rather than room became available (courtesy of Deborah Moggach) at a polished narrative, in the first-ever tale of an ordinary servant writing about everyday life below stairsvery reasonable rent. Imagine being talent-spotted from an evening class and invited to write your memoir: those were the days! |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535382</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Victoria CorenChristopher Fowler|title=For Richer, For Poorer: Confessions of a PlayerWord Monkey
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Some things are It's the first of August in the bloodmiddle of a cool wet summer in East Anglia. For Victoria Coren it was cardsI decided not to swim at the pool in favour of going to my beach hut. As a child she The weather closed in, rain arrived, and brother Giles were taught I decided not to play Blackjack by their grandfatherdo that either. He called When I finished reading this book, I realised it Pontoon but the most valuable lesson was that grandfather was ''always'' the dealer because (a) I wanted to finish reading this book and ''always'' the winner(b) I did not want to do so anywhere near my shack. Giles played Poker but wasnNo spoiler alerts, the dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler 't really a gambler. Victoria was one of life's risk-takers – and she leant to the more adventurous side of her father's familyhis first chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosis. She was unhappy There is something very strange about being made to laugh by a man who repeatedly reminds you that he is dying, and you know he actually is at schoolthat point, preferring the company of her brother's straight-talking friends to the bitchy all-girl atmosphere at schoolbecause he does. In the intervening twenty years she's won a million dollars, but for her it's never been about the moneyHe did.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847672930</amazonuk>0857529625
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{{Frontpage
|author= Kit De Waal
|title= Without Warning and Only Sometimes
|rating= 4
|genre= Autobiography
|summary= As Philip Larkin so eloquently put it, “They f*** you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do” Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit De Waal focuses on this idea of parenthood and the bonds that bind family. This book is a memoir focussing on the author’s formative years as a teenager living in a lower class area of Birmingham. Her father is from St. Kitts in the Caribbean and her mother is an Irish woman ostracized by her family for becoming pregnant by and marrying a black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in the autobiography. Kit De Waal faces multiple hurdles due to her race, her class and her gender. Her parents loom large and are written with care, love, and the kind of anger only a child can express to their parents.
|isbn=1472284852
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1638485216
|title=Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement
|author=Frederick Reynolds
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''Corruption is not department, gender or race specific. It has everything to do with character. Period.''
''One more body just wouldn't matter''. The murder of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, on 25 May 2020 by Derek Chauvin, a forty-four-year-old police officer, in the US city of Minneapolis sent shock waves around the world. We rarely see pictures of a murder taking place but Floyd's death was an exception. The image of Chauvin kneeling on George's neck is not one which I'll ever forget and the protests which followed cannot have been unexpected. There was a backlash against the police - and not just in Minneapolis: whatever their colour or creed they were ''all'' tarred by the Chauvin brush.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amy ChuaBjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri and Agnes Bromme (Translator)|title=Battle Hymn of the Tiger MotherI May Be Wrong
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography|summary=Amy Chua has firm beliefs about parenting. She brought up her two daughtersWhen the Dalai Lama adds his words to your frontispiece, Sophia and Lulu, using a strict set I'm inclined to think it doesn't really matter how the rest of rules – including no sleepoversthe world responds to your book. I know, no playdates, no school plays, no choice of extra curricular activity, no grades less than an A, and no being less than having read the number 1 student book in any 'academic' subjectquestion, that Lindeblad would disagree with that thought. Then there's He knows (and at core so do I) that it matters very much how the piano and violin practice… On hearing she called herdaughter Sophia 'garbage', an acquaintance of hers burst into tears. The thought of praising one rest of the girls for getting a Bworld responds to this book, because it tells the truth as many American parents doit is, would no doubt have a similar affect on Chuain the early 21st century. Mother – or monster?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408812673</amazonuk>1526644827
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eva Petulengrogareth_steel|title=The Girl in the Painted Caravan: Memories of a Romany ChildhoodNever Work With Animals|author=Gareth Steel
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Eva Petulengro was born in I don't often begin my reviews with a painted caravan in 1939warning but with ''Never Work With Animals'' it seems to be appropriate. Her Romany family had travelled in Norfolk Stories of a vet's life have proved popular since ''All Creatures Great and Lincolnshire Small'' but ''Never Work With Animals'' is definitely not the companion volume you've been looking for generations. She has had As a very successful career TV show the author would argue that ''All Creatures'' lacked realism, as a clairvoyant, writer of horoscope columns do other similar programmes. Gareth Steel says that the book is not suitable for younger readers and - after reading - I agree with him. He says that he's written it to inform and publisher of magazinesprovoke thought, and her daughter is also a well known media astrologerparticularly amongst aspiring vets. The Girl in the Painted Caravan is a memoir of her childhood It deals with some uncomfortable and youthdistressing issues but it doesn't lack sensitivity, up until her marriage in her 20s although there are occasions when you would be best choosing between reading and the beginning of her careereating.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330519999</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Harry Leslie SmithDave Letterfly Knoderer|title=1923Speedy: A MemoirHurled Through Havoc
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Harry Leslie Smith was born in 1923. If you're wondering about the title – that's How to summarise the explanation – and although it's when Harry began his life it's not where his story began. He takes us back some years before to his father's family with its roots in mining and a sideline of Dave Letterfly Knodererv in running a pub which was pithy sentence to make them comfortable if not wealthy. Harry's father was middle-aged when he got involved with Lillian, kick off a teenage girl. Unsurprisingly review of his family were not impressed or welcoming when the pair married because a child was on the way. Albert Smith expected that he would inherit the pub when his father diedmemoir? Do you know, but it passed to his uncle and so began a life of disappointment for Albert and LillianI really don't think I can.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1450254136</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Shilling0008350388|title=The Stranger in the Mirror: A Memoir of Middle AgeWe Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Middle''To be a dark-aged women disappear. They are not see on television, their lives do not appear in newspapersskinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, the legions of novels that are written each year rarely feature them. At leastless hireable, that is what the author Jane Shilling believes as she wakes up aged 47 to find the narrative of her contemporaries less intelligent and their lives which she has been reading about and living in parallel with since leaving university has vanishedultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts. She looks in the mirror and sees a face she does not recognise. Even with a punishing regime of early bed, no alcohol and litres of water, it refuses to regain its youthful bloom. '' So she decides to take a magnifying glass ''We Need to this particular moment in time, this journey between youth and old age.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701181001</amazonuk>}}Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rhoda Janzen0571365884|title=Mennonite in My Mess is a Little Black DressBit of Life: A Memoir of Coming HomeAdventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia Pritchett|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Even although Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as a child. She would worry about whether the obliging blurb on monsters under the back cover tells bed were comfortable: it was the reader sort of life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far between. On a visit to a little about being Mennonitetherapist, as an adult, I couldn't resist looking it up in the dictionary. I when she was intrigued completely unable to start reading. And emblazoned across the front cover speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and ''My Mess is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety'No 1 In The US'. Great praise indeed, I thought. But how would it go down across is the pond? Time result - or so we are given to find out ..believe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085789031X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tony JudtDaniel Gibbs with Teresa H Barker|title=The Memory Chalet|rating=5|genre=Autobiography|summary=In 2008 the historian Tony Judt was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disorder that eventually results in complete paralysis for the sufferer. Unable to jot down ideas as they came to him, Judt had to rely A Tattoo on his memory to hold them until he had the chance to dictate his words to somebody else. His memory, which was already good, became exceptional. The progress of the disorder left Judt unable to move, but no mental deterioration or lack of sensation occurred, which he describes as a mixed blessing. He had to endure whole nights lying in the same position, unable to roll over or even to scratch an itch, a prisoner in his own body. To preserve his sanity during these tortuous nights he focussed on events from his own past, linking then with other events and ideas it had never occurred to him were connected. It was during these reveries that the essays in The Memory Chalet were not only conceived, but also developed in their entirety.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020966</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Leon Davis|title=Running Scared: For 22 Years He Was a Fugitive - The Corrupt Cop Busted by Godmy Brain
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Robert Davis was the eldest Alzheimer's is a disease that slowly wears away your identity and sense of nine children all living with their grandmother in New Orleans – on welfareself. His grandmother was a goodI have been directly affected by this cruel disease, honest woman as have many. Your memories and Davis loved and respected her, but money was so tight that he resorted to thieving to bring some extra food in for personality worn away like a statue over time affected the familyelements. He knew It seems as if nature wants that she would be deeply upset about it, but hunger final victory over you and your dignity. This is hungerwhat makes Daniel Gibbs' memoir so admirable. In your heart you can't blame him and it seems that all Daniel Gibbs is coming good when Davis becomes a respected police officer in the mid nineteen-seventies. He's living neurologist who was diagnosed with a good, decent woman Alzheimers and looks set to have a good career. Great, you think, sometimes life has documented his journey in ''isA Tattoo on my Brain'' fair and it works out.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854249932</amazonuk>1108838936
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529109116
|title=Call Me Red: A Shepherd's Journey
|author=Hannah Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=''I want the image of a British farmer to simply be that of a person who is proudly employed in feeding the nation. I don't think that is too much to ask.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gervase Phinn0008333173|title=Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=I spent many of my teenage years reading James Herriot's books, and I found that this collection of anecdotes and poems by Gervase Phinn had a real flavour of Herriot about it. Perhaps it was just the setting, for Phinn was a school inspector in the Dales for many years, but I think he also has that knack of capturing a situation, and a character, and bringing out the humour without making the person appear ridiculous. Here he collates stories from his other books, some Christmassy and others not, and he relates them with several Hungry: A Memoir of his own poems interspersed between.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141036435</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewWanting More|author=Nicky Haslam|title=Redeeming FeaturesGrace Dent|rating=35
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Nicholas Haslam, interior designer, columnist, reviewer, I'm always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the man judges on ''Masterchef''. You know that you're going to get an honest opinion from someone whom it was said would attend you sense does real food rather than fine dining most of the time. You also ponder on how she can look so elegant with all that good food in front of her. I've often wondered about the woman behind the media image and ''Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More'' is a lighted candle, let alone a party, socialite stunning read which will make you laugh and name dropper - this is break your lifeheart in equal measures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954623X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gok Wan1504321383|title=Through Thick Single, Again, and Again, and ThinAgain|author=Louisa Pateman|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Famous for his sensitivity and understanding with women, encouraging them and enabling them to accept themselves, and their bodies, as they are, Gok Wan's autobiography sadly tells a very different story with regards to his own body acceptance. Having gained weight throughout his childhood, getting up to twenty one stone as a teenager, he loathed his body and ended up starving himself, becoming anorexic in a desperate effort to 'You can't be thin happy and, therefore, successfulfulfilled on your own. Perhaps this is where his empathy comes from? That when he stands You are not complete until you find a woman in front of a wall of mirrors in her underwear, he actually truly understands what it is to loathe your own bodyman''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091938392</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Don MullanSakinu Ahronglong|title=The Boy Who Wanted to FlyHunter School|rating=34.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=There The flyleaf to this little collection tells us that it is a Foreward by both Pele and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Names to make most work of us sit up and noticefiction. The title is certainly quirky and Mullan is probably hoping that prospective readers will be saying to themselves, whatThat's this all about thenpossibly misleading. Good start, I thought. Then I realised am not sure whether it is "fiction" in the sense that there's an awful lot of football in this book. Even although Ahronglong made it's a slimall up, sliver of a book, thereor whether it is as the blurb goes on to say 's no getting away from the subject matter. Football. I don't recollections, folklore and autobiographical stories'do' football. So It feels like the latter. It feels like the stories he tells about his experiences as a child, I counted to tenas an adolescent, put on what I hoped was as an adult are real and true. But memory is a good reviewer's face fickle thing, and maybe poetic licence has taken over here and there and maybe calling it fiction means that its safer and started to therefore more people will read it.. More people should.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907756019</amazonuk>1999791282
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Megan Rix1544641923|title=The Puppy That Came For Christmas and Stayed ForeverAmbassadors Do It After Dinner|author=Sandra Aragona
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Along with most of my contemporaries IIt've never read 'The Lady' except once when looking for an au pair job in my student dayss tempting to think that the diplomatic life is privileged and luxurious. It might be privileged, and but family connections tell me that, it turns out, is the problemfar from luxurious. Before Rachel Johnson was appointed in June 2009 Now you're not going to get many ambassadors telling you what it's really like (it's not ''diplomatic'' to do so, you know), but the average age of the readership was 75diplomatic spouse, the circulation was dropping and the magazine was haemorrhaging money. The Budworth familyaccompanying baggage, proprietors of 'The Lady' since it was founded 125 years agowell, chose son and heir Ben Budworth to turn the magazinethat's fortunes around before it foldedan entirely different matter. He asked Rachel Johnson to be editorShe (and it still usually is a 'she') can tell us exactly what goes on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490674</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jo Brand0241446732|title=Can't Stand Up For Sitting DownOur House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=35|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=I am a big fan The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of Jo Brand and I love her inimitable droll style the parenting of comedytheir two daughters. I always enjoy Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her stand up performances as well as her appearances on my favourite panel programme QIsister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. As In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a consequence I was really interested solution close to read her second autobiographical book – Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down. As she states at the beginning thoughhome, this is not really an autobiography but eventually, it became clear to the family that they were ''burned-out people on a collection of thoughts and experiences that have resulted due burned-out planet''. If they were to her life as find a stand up comedian. The book covers the period from her first professional gig up way to live happily again their solution would need to the present daybe radical. Her early life and career in psychiatric nursing are covered in her earlier book [[Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand|Look Back in Hunger]].|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755355261</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ellen MacArthur191280493X|title=Full CircleComing of Age|author=Danny Ryan
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=It's some years since I read [[Taking on the World by Ellen MacArthur|Taking on the World]] and – against all expectations thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm not a sailor He began writing novels and don't have a great deal poetry at the age of interest in yacht racing – twelve, but what appealed it was to me immediately was the character of someone who was determined not take him a further forty-eight years to let ''anything'' stand in the way realise that he wasn’t very good at either. Consistently unpublished for all that time, he remains a shining example of her ambitionshope over experience.. My only disappointment came later as I felt that the book had been written too soon – I really wanted to know about '''that''' big race and what you do with the future when you've done everything. How lucky did I feel when ''Full Circle'' landed on my desk?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718148630</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tony Fitzjohn190874572X|title=Born Wild: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Passion for Lions and for AfricaLetters from Tove|author=Tove Jansson (Author), Boel Westin (Editor), Helen Svensson (Editor), Sarah Death (Translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Maybe Back at the beginning of the century, I went on holiday to Nepal. I met a wonderful Finnish woman and we became sort-of-friends. I can't remember if it's just my rock-chick nature but "Born Wild" feels was on that holiday or a little clunky as titles golater one that Paula told me I really had to read Tove Jansson. Surely I do know that it should have been "Born To Be Wild"? Perhaps was four years later that phrase has been copyrighted I finally acquired an English translation of The Summer Book, and wasnthat I eagerly awaited the ''Sort Of't available. Or maybe Fitzjohn was deliberately referencing Joy Adamson's book "Born Free" – since much translations of the early part rest of his own time in Africa was spent with her husband George. "Born To Be Wild" would have been more accurate Jansson's work and devoured them as soon as well. Many of the animals we meet weren't born wild at all – though a good few of I could get my hands on them got to live out the remainder of their days and die that way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918911</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Judith Summers1908745819|title=The Badness of King GeorgeSurfacing |author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=People know how to get round me: they offer me Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book and then say , they tell you ''this one has your name on it'It's about a dog. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so, unless it turns out that we didn' and t like Pavlovthe book. That's canine a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I say 'Oh, lovely'was told why. And so it was with The Badness blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of King Georgeherself. '' George is Older. Less tethered. That's not a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and bad description of where I have am. Add to quibble with that my love of the title – superb as it is – because George is natural world, of those aspects of the poetic and lyrical that are about style not badform, and substance most of all, about connection. If anything he's badly done by as Judith SummersOf course, plagued by empty nest syndrome when her son goes to university, decides to foster rescue dogsthis book had my name on it. Poor George has absolutely no idea what she's let him in It was written forme. It would have found its way to me eventually. And nor has JudithI am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141046473</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kevin Lewis1906852472|title=The KidWild Child: A True StoryGrowing Up a Nomad|author=Ian Mathie|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Kevin Lewis grew For Ian Mathie fans there is good and bad news. Ian has come up on a poverty-stricken London council estate with the missing link in his narrative, the sort story of home a very unusual childhood (yes, the very years that made him the neighbours complain aboutamazing man he became). His mother The bad – inadequate by any measure well it's hardly news two years later – hated him more than most of her six children and he was beaten and starved by both of his parentsis that the book is published posthumously. You might think that Social Services would have stepped in and removed himAs always, it's beautifully written, but any relief was to be short-livedwith many exciting moments. Eventually he What I most enjoyed was put into care but even then the support was inadequate and Kevin found himself caught up feeling that many of the questions in Ian Mathie's later books are answered in ''Wild Child'' with a criminal underworld where he was known simply as 'The Kidsatisfying clunk. Seemingly all that's now left in the drawer is unpublishable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>014104859X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dai Henley1999811402|title=B PositivePainting Snails|author=Stephen John Hartley|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Dai Henley counts himself lucky It's very difficult to have been born to loving and nurturing parents. When they discovered classify ''Painting Snails'': originally I thought that his blood group was B positive they gave him his motto in life, and coincidentally, the title of this book. As he explains, as it's not loosely based around a celebrity autobiography (you might year on an allotment it would be selling yourself a little short therelifestyle book, Dai) but you're not going to get advice on what to plant when and nor is it a misery memoirwhere for the best results. It's the story of a man who has made The answer would be something along the most lines of every opportunity he's been given – try it and a few mistakes along the way – but hesee's won through despite the difficulties and played a fair amount of sport too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907499180</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Malalai Joya|title=Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Forget entertainment – this is a book to read if you have any interest in the war in Afghanistan. My particular view has developed from a British armchair Then I considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, comprising part emotional reactiondid an engineering apprenticeship, became a smidgeon of history busker, finally got into medical school and is now an overA&E consultant (part-reliance time). I found out that there's an awful lot more to what goes on British media sourcesin a Major Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from ''Casualty'', but that isn't really what the book's about. In There's a war zone where truth has been a casualty throughoutlot about rock & roll, this book gives which seems to be the general reader an authentic view real passion of conditions in Afghanistan over Hartley's life, but it didn't actually fit into the past twenty five years of continual warfareentertainment genre either. Written by Did we have a young and hotcategory for 'doing the impossible the hard way'? Yep -headed, wildly patriotic that'ordinarys the one. It' woman, this is no more reliable than any other partisan view, but its value is to help put official news sources into their proper context. I found it educative in several sensess an autobiography.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846041503</amazonuk>
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