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[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> ==Autobiography== <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Holroyd0241636604|title=A Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Picture the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptor, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridors of Lord Grimthorpe's mansion. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour of the balconies of the coastal villa at Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrast, energetically inspired to passionate love affairs. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous, like E.M.Forster, Virginia Woolf, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West and then there was that tempestuous iconoclast, D.H.Lawrence. Many such lives were inspired by both landscape and lust, fashioned by each other's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here we learn of talents and beauty that inspires artistic endeavour, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. She, who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends in the pages of annotated diaries which became ''Trading Game: A Book of Secrets''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548941</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewConfession|author=Erica Heller|title=Yossarian Slept HereGary Stevenson|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary='To live forever or die If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in the attemptyour mind, you' was re unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the essential glory in life pin-stripe suit and living that his background is at the heart East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of John Yossarian in [[Catch 22 by Joseph Heller|Catch 22]]Economics. This autobiography of the daughter Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his creatorability at what was, Joseph Helleressentially, reveals how the same excitement and joie de vivre suffused throughout the Heller familya card game which got him an internship with Citibank. The harebrained unpredictability Eventually, the madcap exploits and relationships bowl us through this book with terrific pace and verveturned into permanent employment as a trader.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570084</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matt Whyman1529395224|title=Pig in Letting the Cat Out of the MiddleBag: The Secret Life of a Vet|author=Sion Rowlands|rating=43.5|genre=PetsAnimals and Wildlife|summary=I'm so pleased I read this bookSiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. ItHis father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the strain that being on-call put on his father's only life. When he was seventeen he took the occasional writer opportunity of doing work experience with a family friend who grabs me by was a vet and was convinced this was the short and curlies job for him. Before long, he was at Liverpool University. It hadn't - as with so many students - been his observation of human naturedream since he was a child. If anything, but accomplished childrenhe's writer Matt Whyman not only grabbed me, but sold me on the mini-pigs as welld wanted to be a professional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444711466</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick Cockburn and Henry CockburnEdel Rodriguez|title=Henry's DemonsWorm: Living with Schizophrenia. a Father and Son's StoryA Cuban American Odyssey|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyGraphic Novels|summary=In February 2002 Patrick Cockburn was We're in Kabulchildhood, reporting to The Independent on the fall of the Talibanand we're in Cuba. While he was there he called his wife Jan at home in EnglandThe revolution has happened, and was shocked to learn that their 20-year-old elder son Henry had been rescued by fishermen after coming close to death while swimmingCastro, fully clothed, in the icy waters first thought of as a saviour of the Newhaven estuary. The police had decided that he was country, has proven himself a danger to himselfCommunist, and he was now in not done nearly enough to create a mental hospitallevel playing field for all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847377033</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Lammy|title=Out Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of the Ashes: Britain After the Riots|rating=4taking his time away.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Just about everyone Our narrator's family weren't in the country was shocked as pictures happiest of places here, an uncle refusing to be the 2011 riots good soldier the country demanded (which began in Tottenham especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and spread to other major cities in the UK) unfolded on our television screens. Everyonefather being watched and watched, that isand not liked for his successful photography business, except David Lammy, MP for the areasuccess being frowned upon. He might not have known when it would happen or what would trigger The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the riotheat, but a year beforein this sultry island country, he said that it would happen. This wasn't a lucky guess: Lammy was born in Tottenham and brought up on remains the Broadwater Farm Estate as one kind of heat forcing you out of five children raised by his single-parent mother and he knows what's happening on the ground.kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0852652674</amazonuk>1474616720
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gillian Lynne1035025299|title=A Dancer in Wartime: One Girl's Journey from Went to London, Took the Blitz to Sadler's WellsDog|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=At eight Nina Stibbe is returning to London for a sabbatical after being away for twenty years old, Gill Pyrke was driving her parents crazy, as she couldn. She't sit still and was nicknamed s been at Victoria''wriggle-bottom''. Her mum took her to see the family GP and told him in great detail how annoying she was. The doctor asked if he could talk to Gill alone and put on some music. She started to dance around and climbed on to his desk. He prescribed ballet classes. She started off in a Bromley dance class where one of her classmates was later to be the famous ballerina Beryl Grey. This story is lovely and funny, and has lots of elements of a dream story, yet is told s smallholding in a very down to earth style Leicestershire which makes it very convincing. The same could be said of the whole of Gillian Lynneisn's memoir of her early yearst all that conducive to writing, starting out on a brilliant career in dance.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185996</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jermaine Jackson|title=You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brotheras there's Eyes|rating=4always something smallholding happening - as you might expect.5|genre=Biography|summary=It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson in the two years since his sudden passing will be merely the tip The other side of the iceberg. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge decision was sealed when a room became available (courtesy of his life and death, there will surely be few if any to rival this account by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve DennisDeborah Moggach) at a very reasonable rent.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007435665</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeanette WintersonChristopher Fowler|title=Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?Word Monkey
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I saw the BBCIt's 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit' the first of August in the middle of a semi-autobiographical account cool wet summer in East Anglia. I decided not to swim at the pool in favour of Winterson's childhoodgoing to my beach hut. This book's title is equally memorable The weather closed in, rain arrived, and unique and we learn I decided not to do that either. When I finished reading this book, I realised it's was because (a line Mrs Winterson said ) I wanted to finish reading this book and (b) I did not want to do so anywhere near my shack. No spoiler alerts, the young Jeanettedust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler 'was' – and his first chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosis. 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 that point, because he does. He did.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224093452</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}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Angie Beasley1638485216|title=The Frog PrincessBlack, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man's Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement|author=Frederick Reynolds|rating=35
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I expected a tabloid expose of the beauty queen industry, or a spirited defence against feminist ethical attacks of the past few years from one of its successful 'victims'. Best of allCorruption is not department, I enjoy an ordinary person telling an authentic emotional tale, whatever their circumstances gender or personal history. Sadly I'm afraid that this book fell rather short on these attractionsrace specific. At first I felt that Angie Beasley deserved a lot more editorial help in developing her manuscriptIt has everything to do with character. Then I realised that the story was ghost written, which explains the lack of authentic voice fairly neatlyPeriod.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718158318</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian MathieBjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri and Agnes Bromme (Translator)|title=Supper With The PresidentI May Be Wrong
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography|summary=It's such a pleasure When the Dalai Lama adds his words to read an Ian Mathie bookyour frontispiece, so I really looked forward 'm inclined to think it doesn'Supper with t really matter how the rest of the President'world responds to your book. No surprises I know, then, to find this having read the book every bit as delightfulin question, intriguing and informative as his othersthat Lindeblad would disagree with that thought. Ian Mathie He knows exactly (and at core so do I) that it matters very much how to stitch up a good story; the occasional photographs - proving rest of the stories are not fiction – come almost as a surprise. The books are helpfully illustrated with simple maps placing the stories in geographical context. To meworld responds to this book, Ian Mathie is simply the best of because it tells the relatively unknown writers I have come across truth as a reviewer. Interestinglyit is, in the two men in my household grab and devour Ian Mathie's books, and I imagine anyone interested in development issues and/or Africa would welcome one or two of his titles for Christmasearly 21st century. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906852103</amazonuk>1526644827
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Samuel Beckett, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Lois More Overbeck, George Craig and Dan Gunngareth_steel|title=The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941-1956Never Work With Animals|author=Gareth Steel
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Despite the title, Volume 2 really begins in 1945. During the war, Beckett was working I don't often begin my reviews with a warning but with the French Resistance, and had ''Never Work With Animals'' it seems to go into hidingbe appropriate. In order to keep the picture reasonably complete, there is Stories of a chronology of the war years, vet's life have proved popular since ''All Creatures Great and Small'' but ''Never Work With Animals'' is definitely not the introduction includes companion volume you've been looking for. As a lettercard sent to James Joyce in February 1941TV show the author would argue that ''All Creatures'' lacked realism, a pre-printed postcard presenting prefabricated phrases which the sender could strike out as appropriatedo other similar programmes. During Gareth Steel says that the war only the mildest of family news could be sent through the mail, book is not suitable for younger readers and even this was subject - after reading - I agree with him. He says that he's written it to censorshipinform and provoke thought, particularly amongst aspiring vets. Joyce never received the cardIt deals with some uncomfortable and distressing issues but it doesn't lack sensitivity, as he died the day after it was writtenalthough there are occasions when you would be best choosing between reading and eating.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521867940</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth Chatwin and Nicholas Shakespeare (ed)Dave Letterfly Knoderer|title=Under the Sun. The Letters of Bruce ChatwinSpeedy: Hurled Through Havoc
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Roy Tomkinson comes over as pretty sentimental about aspects of his childhood. He was born into a family How to summarise the life of boys, and surrounded by an extended family spread along the valley. He was a child Dave Letterfly Knodererv in the nineteen fifties, when post-War austerity was still a feature of life in Wales. Nevertheless, discipline, love and understanding were meted out by his parents in equal measures pithy sentence to provide kick off a strong platform for review of his childhood adventures. Roy and his gang grew up free-ranging the valley, teaching their dogs and ferrets to catch ratsmemoir? Do you know, trespassing on industrial land, learning about girls, and entirely missing the growing affluence of central Britain. For them, it was idyllic, and the author makes it clear, many times, how lucky he feels to have enjoyed such a stable childhood environmentI really don't think I can.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0862438683</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian Mathie0008350388|title=Man in a Mud HutWe Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=We tend ''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to remember where we were and how we heard about the deaths of people like John F Kennedybe seen as less desirable, less hireable, Elvis Presley less intelligent and Princess Diana, but I'd add another person to the list: John Smithultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts. I remember sitting in my office and a colleague coming in to tell me. She added 'I suppose we'll have that dreary Gordon Brown as leader now'. We'd many angst-ridden miles to go before that came about but Smith's death is the opening entry in this, the third volume (but first chronologically) of Chris Mullin's Diaries. This book covers the first period of 'New Labour', from SmithWe Need to Talk About Money's death until Mullin's assumption into government in July 1999.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685230</amazonuk>}}by Otegha Uwagba
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lydia Ola Taiwo0571365884|title=A Broken ChildhoodMy Mess is a Bit of Life: A True Story of AbuseAdventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia Pritchett|rating=3.54
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Mojisola – known to everyone Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as Ola – a child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was born to a Nigerian couple in London in 1964 and spent the first five years sort of her life in a foster home in Brighton. Here where if she was loved, looked after and lived her life in a genuinely good family. This wasn't an unusual arrangement as it allowed the biological parents had nothing to earn money without worrying worry about childcare – she would become anxious but such occasions were few and Ola was happyfar between. It On a visit to a therapist, as an adult, when she was all the more cruel when her biological father arrived completely unable to take speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and 'home' for the weekend – My Mess is a weekend which would stretch into seven years Bit of abuse and neglecta Life: Adventures in Anxiety'' is the result - or so we are given to believe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846245907</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Max PembertonDaniel Gibbs with Teresa H Barker|title=The Doctor Will See You NowA Tattoo on my Brain
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Self-help books are pretty polarising when you think about itAlzheimer's is a disease that slowly wears away your identity and sense of self. I meanhave been directly affected by this cruel disease, would you tell somebody that you were reading as have many. Your memories and personality worn away like a self-help book if you had no idea how they were going to react? On statue over time affected the one hand there must be people who devour these kinds of books one after the other, searching for that mystical formula that will bring about profound inner changeelements. At the other end of the scale are readers It seems as if nature wants that steer well clear of self-help or anything else that isn't rational final victory over you and based on proper scientific research and evidenceyour dignity. Entrenched views are This is what makes this title an interesting propositionDaniel Gibbs' memoir so admirable. A sceptic's search for health and healing which alludes to meditation? Surely much more interesting than Daniel Gibbs is a new age guru neurologist who already believes wholeheartedly that their insights will transform YOUR life was diagnosed with Alzheimers and enrich their bank balance. I want to know how the sceptic was convinced, not the guy who entered the room wearing healing crystalshas documented his journey in ''A Tattoo on my Brain''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548887</amazonuk>1108838936
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pauline Black1529109116|title=Black by DesignCall Me Red: A 2-tone MemoirShepherd's Journey|author=Hannah Jackson
|rating=4.5
|genre=AutobiographyLifestyle|summary=As ''I want the front cover image of this volume a British farmer to simply be that of reminiscences reminds us, Pauline Black a person who is remembered first and foremost for fronting The Selecter, one of proudly employed in feeding the few 2-Tone ska bands to enjoy fleeting chart success at the end of the 1970snation. Yet reading this reminds us I don't think that that was only the tip of the icebergis too much to ask.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668790X</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andy Kershaw0008333173|title=No Off SwitchHungry: The AutobiographyA Memoir of Wanting More|author=Grace Dent
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=I'm always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the judges on ''Masterchef'The boy Kershaw' as his hero and later friend John Peel sometimes wryly referred to him on air, has had a pretty remarkable life. HeYou know that you's been – taken a deep breath – a concert promoter while studying politics at Leeds University, Billy Bragg's driver across re going to get an honest opinion from someone whom you sense does real food rather than fine dining most of Europe, a presenter on BBC TV and successively the time. You also ponder on Radios 1, 3 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 4, ''Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More'' is a news correspondent reporting from Iraq, Haiti, Angola and Rwanda, stunning read which will make you laugh and also done time as a guest of Her Majestybreak your heart in equal measures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687446</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Natalie Taylor1504321383|title=Signs of LifeSingle, Again, and Again, and Again|author=Louisa Pateman|rating=34.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Natalie Taylor was just twenty four years old, and five months pregnant, when her husband died in a tragic accident. This memoir takes us from the day she found out he was dead through to her son's first birthday. Natalie's situation is horribly sad. I You can't even begin to imagine what I would have done in her place. The record of her grieving process is very raw be happy and honestfulfilled on your own. Based upon her journals that she kept through this time her pain leaps off the page and makes You are not complete until you feel sick inside for the horror shefind a man's facing. I liked that she doesn't seem to be advocating a correct way to grieve. She simply states how she felt, how she reacted at each moment, be that calmly and quietly or with raging, screaming tears. Luckily she had an extremely supportive family and a good group of friends and it is interesting - if rather disturbing - to follow her progress as she deals with her life without her husband.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444724673</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara SinatraSakinu Ahronglong|title=Lady Blue Eyes: My Life With Frank SinatraHunter School
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Barbara Blakeley, born The flyleaf to this little collection tells us that it is a work of fiction. That's possibly misleading. I am not sure whether it is "fiction" in 1926the sense that Ahronglong made it all up, was married firstly or whether it is as the blurb goes on to Robert Oliver, an executive, with whom she had a sonsay ''recollections, folklore and secondly to Zeppo Marxautobiographical stories''. It feels like the latter. But it was It feels like the already thrice-married and thrice-divorced Francis Albert Sinatra, whom she had idolized stories he tells about his experiences as a singer for a long timechild, with whom she would make her most enduring marriageas an adolescent, as an adult are real and vice versatrue. They tied the knot in 1976But memory is a fickle thing, and stayed together until his death in 1998maybe poetic licence has taken over here and there and maybe calling it fiction means that its safer and therefore more people will read it. More people should.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091937248</amazonuk>1999791282
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna Burley1544641923|title=Bipolar ParentAmbassadors Do It After Dinner|author=Sandra Aragona|rating=34
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Anna Burley keeps telling herself It's tempting to think that she the diplomatic life is a responsible adult now privileged and works on the idea that most people would see her as a normal, well-grounded personluxurious. What people ''don't'' see It might be privileged, but family connections tell me that it is the story of her childhoodfar from luxurious. She wrote it down Now you're not going to get rid of many ambassadors telling you what it, to get it out her system and rid herself of those pockets of pain which live under her skin. She's decided that shereally like (it's not going to run from it all any longer. ''Bipolar Parentdiplomatic'' is to do so, you know), but the story of her childhood and diplomatic spouse, the parent who had such accompanying baggage, well, that's an influence in making her into entirely different matter. She (and it still usually is a 'she') can tell us exactly what she is todaygoes on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1456775332</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian A Griffiths0241446732|title=DMD Life Art Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and MeSvante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Ian Griffiths suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy - a form The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of muscular dystrophy which causes muscle degenerationtheir two daughters. It begins in early childhood with difficulty in walking Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and progresses to cause problems her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with breathing and all the voluntary muscles. Ultimately it's fatalwhat was happening. Men and boys – In such circumstances, it's linked natural to the X chromosome so affects only males – with the disease have seek a life expectancy of between the late teens and mid-twenties. Ian's in his mid-twenties now and he's written 'DMD Life: art and me' solution close to explain what home, but eventually, it really feels like became clear to live with the disease. And when I say 'really feels like' I do mean family that. Ian doesnthey were 't gloss over ''anythingburned-out people on a burned-out planet''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907652337</amazonuk> If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bob Marshall-Andrews191280493X|title=Off Message: The Complete Antidote to Political HumbugComing of Age|author=Danny Ryan
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Bob Marshall-Andrews entered Parliament in 1997''He began writing novels and poetry at the age of twelve, rather too late but it was to be take him a career politician (further forty-eight years to realise that he was already an established QC) and with a profound distrust of authoritywasn’t very good at either. He had no aspirations towards office, which was perhaps as well Consistently unpublished for all concerned as that time, he would become best known for being remains a dissidentshining example of hope over experience.. I occasionally enquired as to which party held his allegiance and eventually concluded that he went with his conscience. The last three Labour administrations '' ''This a memoir from someone you have never heard of - but will feel like you have spawned more political memoirs than any other – and I did wonder if this would be just one more to add to the pile.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684412</amazonuk>''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karen Blixen190874572X|title=Out Of AfricaLetters from Tove|author=Tove Jansson (Author), Boel Westin (Editor), Helen Svensson (Editor), Sarah Death (Translator)
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=It's more than a quarter Back at the beginning of a the century since , I first saw the film ''Out went on holiday to Nepal. I met a wonderful Finnish woman and we became sort-of Africa-friends. I can'' and t remember if it's was on that holiday or a later one of the few that have stayed with Paula told me over the intervening yearsI really had to read Tove Jansson. It wasn't just the storyI do know that it was four years later that I finally acquired an English translation of The Summer Book, but the personality of Karen Blixen and that I eagerly awaited the wonderful landscape ''Sort Of'' translations of the Ngong Hills, south rest of Nairobi, in KenyaJansson's Rift Valley. work and devoured them as soon as I remember looking for this book at the time, but being unable to find it, so the opportunity to read it now was too good to misscould get my hands on them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951437</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sara Wheeler1908745819|title=Access All Areas: Selected Writings 1990-2010Surfacing |author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Betty Lussier was born in AlbertaSometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, Canadathey tell you ''this one has your name on it''. At the height of the depression her father bought a Maryland farm Mostly we take them at a bank foreclosure saletheir word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they crossed thought so, unless it turns out that we didn't like the border book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the States and settled down author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the hard life natural world, of raising dairy cattle those aspects of the poetic and the crops needed lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to feed themhave it fall onto my path so quickly.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1591144493</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1906852472|title=Wild Child: Growing Up a Nomad
|author=Ian Mathie
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary='Bride Price' For Ian Mathie fans there is good and bad news. Ian has proved an even more absorbing book than I anticipated from its Amazon write-come up. I read it with the missing link in his narrative, the story of a single sitting; very unusual childhood (yes, the very years that made him the issues amazing man he became). The bad – well it raised overwhelming my thoughts for 's hardly news two years later – is that the next couple of daysbook is published posthumously. In terms of its overall flavourAs always, quality and impact valueit's beautifully written, with many exciting moments. What Imost enjoyed was the feeling that many of the questions in Ian Mathie's later books are answered in ''Wild Child''d bracket it with a satisfying clunk. Seemingly all that's now left in the classic 'Walkabout' by James Vance Marshalldrawer is unpublishable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906852081</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Isaiah Berlin1999811402|title=Enlightening: Letters 1946 - 1960|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Isaiah Berlin wrote in tribute to the memory of Dorothy de Rothschild of her personality, '…overwhelming charm, great dignity, a very lively sense of humour, pleasure in the oddities of life, an unconquerable vitality and a kind of eternal youth and an eager responsiveness to all that passed…' Reading this second volume of letters, now available in paperback, covering Berlin's most creative period, these same characteristics might be aptly applied to Sir Isaiah himself. However, as this most self-aware of intellectuals recognised, his loquacity and compulsive socialising were driven by a persistent need to escape a sense of unreality, an inner void. In these letters he writes, 'my quest for gaiety is a perpetual defence against the extreme sense of the abyss by which I have been affected ever since I can remember myself…'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844138348</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPainting Snails|author=Bill Larkworthy|title=Doctor Lark: The Benefits of a Medical EducationStephen John Hartley|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Bill Larkworthy is It's very difficult to classify ''Painting Snails'': originally I thought that as it's loosely based around a pleasant fellow who has lead year on an eventfulallotment it would be a lifestyle book, but you're not world-shattering lifegoing to get advice on what to plant when and where for the best results. So at The answer would be something along the outset lines of 'try itand see's probably worth saying that this self-deprecating tale won't light many literary fires. If fireworks are what you are looking for Then I considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, did an engineering apprenticeship, became a busker, search elsewherefinally got into medical school and is now an A&E consultant (part-time). On the other hand, I always find ordinary peoplefound out that there's stories of everyday life fascinating, as well as providing useful background, or an awful lot more to what used to be called goes on in a Major Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from ''Casualty'general knowledge', but that isn't really what the book's about other parts of the world. Since my general knowledge of There's a lot about rock & roll, which seems to be the Gulf States is more or less limited to Lawrence real passion of Arabia and current news reportsHartley's life, a little padding wonbut it didn't go amissactually fit into the entertainment genre either. So yes, I did enjoy this read, and I imagine Did we have a category for 'doing the impossible the hard way'? Yep - that's the Saga age group will borrow it in steady numbers from libraries (if they can find one open). It would make a good present for a man of a certain age, which is:|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906852065</amazonuk>'s an autobiography.
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