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[[Category:Autobiography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harry Redknapp0241636604|title=HarryThe Trading Game: My AutobiographyA Confession|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=When I began reading this book I wasn't entirely sure that I liked it. I didn't quite know how If you were to take the Nina from the title. She's bring up an image of a twenty year old Nannycity banker in your mind, employed by the editor you're unlikely to think of the London Review of Books and living near Regent's Park in North Londonsomeone like Gary Stevenson. The book contains her letters to her sister, Victoria living at home in Leicestershire, A hoodie and tell of jeans replaces the events pin-stripe suit and happenings in her life as a Nanny and thenhis background is the East End, going onwhere he was familiar with violence, in her life as a student at Thames Polytechnicpoverty and injustice. Initially it felt like she There was name dropping no posh public school on his CV - Alan Bennett lives over but he had been to the road London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and drops in for dinner he has a facility with numbers which most days; the father of Will and Sam, the two boys she is nannying, is Stephen Frears; down the road lives Claire Tomalin and her partner Michael Fraynus can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid..and yet It was his ability at what was, given chanceessentially, you begin to see that she isn't awed by the notoriety of these people (indeeda card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, she tells her sister that Alan Bennett was in Coronation Street!) and actually they are just the neighbours and so it is less important that Alan Bennett (AB this turned into permanent employment as he's referred to in the book) comes around for dinner every night since he isn't there for fame value but rather for his own unique place in this rather crazy family life memoir!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670922765</amazonuk>a trader.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529395224|title=Ammonites and Leaping FishLetting the Cat Out of the Bag: A The Secret Life in Timeof a Vet|author=Penelope LivelySion Rowlands
|rating=3.5
|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Now aged 80, Penelope LivelySiôn Rowlands fell into veterinary science accidentally. His father was a GP and Rowlands didn't want to follow in his footsteps, particularly when he considered the Booker Prizestrain that being on-winning author call put on his father's life. When he was seventeen he took the opportunity of twenty works of fiction including ''Moon Tiger'' (1987) doing work experience with a family friend who was a vet and ''How was convinced this was the job for him. Before long, he was at Liverpool University. It All Beganhadn'' (2011), is increasingly conscious of death approachingt - as with so many students - been his dream since he was a child. It may be true that If anything, as concluded in [[Nothing he'd wanted to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes]], 'we cannot truly savour life without a regular awareness of extinction', but this memoir is less a ''memento mori'' than an agreeably scattered tour through Lively's life and timesprofessional footballer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241146380</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tony BennEdel Rodriguez|title=The Last DiariesWorm: A Blaze of Autumn SunshineCuban American Odyssey
|rating=4
|genre=AutobiographyGraphic Novels|summary=Throughout my life IWe've found that whilst I might not always agree with Tony Bennre in childhood, and we's politicsre in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, whatever he had to say would give me food for first thought - of as a saviour of the country, has proven himself a Communist, and frequently changed the way that I viewed not done nearly enough to create a situationlevel playing field for all. He's a wonderful mixture of supreme intelligence and humanity which is so rarely found - particularly in modernWell, those hours-day politics and it was with some misgivings that I opened this volume long speeches of his diaries, given that the slipcover speaks were kind of the ''compensations and challenges of old age'' and taking his time away. Our narrator's family weren't in the disadvantages happiest of growing olderplaces here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the loneliness of widowhoodcountry demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and the upheaval of moving from the family home of sixty years father being watched and watched, and the problems of failing healthnot liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon.'' I've always been relieved that Benn has never ''quite'' achieved The mother gets the couple jobs with the status party to ease some of national treasurethe heat, but surely he couldn't be in decline?this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091943876</amazonuk>1474616720
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephen Jin-Nom Lee and Howard Webster1035025299|title=Canton Elegy: A Father's Letter of Sacrifice, Survival and Love|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Stephen Jin-Nom Lee, known in his childhood as Ah Nom, was born early in the twentieth century in the village of Dai Waan in rural China. His father died when he was young and he lived with his grandmother, mother and 'Little Uncle', who was only a matter of months older than Ah Nom. They'd become friends as they grew older, but when his Grandfather returned after a long absence in America there as a distinct rivalry between the two. Then Grandfather revealed his reason for returning home - he intended Went to take the boys to America to be educated. It was a wonderful opportunity and Ah Nom left the village and his mother not knowing when he would see either again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780285736</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=My Life|author=David Jason|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Born in North London in February 1940 during the early years of the Second World War, David John White once had a brief career as an electrician. Fortunately for the world of entertainment and the public, he soon forsook Took the world of fuses and wires for that of the stage and small screen. When he joined Equity, they already had a David White on their records, and after a little quick thinking on the phone, he became David Jason.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780891407</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=A Piece of Danish HappinessDog|author=Sharmi AlbrechtsenNina Stibbe
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Sharmi Albrechtsen was Nina Stibbe is returning to London for a true Hindu-American princesssabbatical after being away for twenty years. Obsessed with shoes and handbags and designer labels, she saw status and wealth as the only route to happiness. But she wasn She's been at Victoria't happy enough, no matter how much designer gear she owned. And it wasns smallholding in Leicestershire which isn't until 1997, when she married her second husband, a Dane, and relocated all that conducive to Denmarkwriting, that she began to wonder if it was as there's always something lacking in herself, rather than her possessions, that smallholding happening - as you might expect. The other side of the decision was sealed when a room became available (courtesy of Deborah Moggach) at the root of her problemsa very reasonable rent.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00EAINZM8</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The True German: The Diary of a World War II Military JudgeChristopher Fowler|authortitle=Werner Otto Muller-Hill and Benjamin Carter HettWord Monkey|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=WeIt've had diaries s the first of August in the middle of teenagers, opium addicts, drug smugglers, and a lot morecool wet summer in East Anglia. Some I decided not to swim at the pool in favour of them have been optimisticgoing to my beach hut. The weather closed in, happy thingsrain arrived, and many I decided notto do that either. Clearly World War II was not a place for a terribly cheerful outlookWhen I finished reading this book, whatever the diarist. However sometimes I realised it was because (a) I wanted to finish reading this book and (b) I did not the done thing want to be pessimisticdo so anywhere near my shack. No spoiler alerts, for example when you were in the huge German military dust jacket tells us who Christopher Fowler 'was' – and were publicly denigrating the dreamt-of Nazi successhis first chapter tells us about his terminal diagnosis. Such ''corrosion of morale'' would mean you There is something very strange about being put in front of made to laugh by a three-man military tribunalwho repeatedly reminds you that he is dying, and most probably sentenced for such treacherous behaviour. The startling thing about this book, however, you know he actually is at that it contains much that would certainly have been deemed ''corrosion of morale''point, yet it was written by one of the very military judges who served on those panelsbecause he does. He did.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1137278544</amazonuk>0857529625
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Hospice Voices: Lessons for Living at the End of LifeKit De Waal|authortitle=Eric LindnerWithout Warning and Only Sometimes|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=''Hospice Voices'' tells 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 stories of bonds that bind family. This book is a memoir focussing on the last days of some fascinating people while it follows author Eric Lindner through his journey author’s formative years as a hospice volunteer 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 crisis black man. This intersectionality plays a large role in his own daughter's healththe 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. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1442220597</amazonuk>1472284852
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1638485216|title=Lucky MeBlack, White, and Gray All Over: My A Black Man's Odyssey in Life With - And Without - My Mom, Shirley MacLaineand Law Enforcement|author=Sachi Parker with Frederick StroppelReynolds|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Born in Los Angeles''Corruption is not department, raised in Tokyo, and schooled across Europe, Sachi Parker had already lead an eventful life before she turned 18gender or race specific. Add It has everything to the mix a secretive father do with an explosive temper and a Hollywood icon for a mother and you have enough stories to fill a bookcharacter. Period.''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Boy on the Wooden BoxBjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankeler, Navid Modiiri and Agnes Bromme (Translator)|authortitle=Leon LeysonI May Be Wrong
|rating=5
|genre=TeensAutobiography|summary=This is When the memoir of one of Dalai Lama adds his words to your frontispiece, I'm inclined to think it doesn't really matter how the youngest people on Oskar Schindler's famous list rest of Jews saved from the Nazis during World War IIworld responds to your book. It opens between I know, having read the warsbook in question, that Lindeblad would disagree with Leon's family living in the small Polish town of Narewkathat thought. There wasn't He knows (and at core so do I) that it matters very much money but everyone was happy. Leon's father moved to Krakow in how the hopes rest of making a better life and when Leon and his siblings eventually join himthe world responds to this book, you can feel because it tells the wonder of a little boy new to truth as it is, in the big cityearly 21st century. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00CWEHR2G</amazonuk>1526644827
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=gareth_steel|title=Wicked GamesNever Work With Animals|author=Kelly LawrenceGareth Steel|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyAnimals and Wildlife|summary=Sometimes you read I don't often begin my reviews with a book that is supposed warning but with ''Never Work With Animals'' it seems to be fiction, and immediately question whether it isn’t appropriate. Stories of a true story loosely fictionalised vet's life have proved popular since ''All Creatures Great and with Small'' but ''Never Work With Animals'' is definitely not the companion volume you've been looking for. As a few character names changed, so TV show the author doesn’t lose face if it’s not well received. would argue that ''Wicked GamesAll Creatures'' is no such booklacked realism, because you’re told from as do other similar programmes. Gareth Steel says that the outset book is not suitable for younger readers and - after reading - I agree with him. He says that it’s a real life erotic memoirhe's written it to inform and provoke thought, particularly amongst aspiring vets. And, while the author still has It deals with some discretion regarding how much or how little she sharesuncomfortable and distressing issues but it doesn't lack sensitivity, although there are occasions when you genuinely come away feeling like you’ve just read a startlingly intimate description of a real person’s private lifewould be best choosing between reading and eating.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753541718</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Will CohuDave Letterfly Knoderer|title=The Wolf PitSpeedy: Hurled Through Havoc
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Up on How to summarise the north Yorkshire Moors there’s a feature life of the landscape known as the Wolf Pit. It’s thought to be Dave Letterfly Knodererv in a medieval trap into which wolves were driven, but as you get close to it, it’s difficult pithy sentence to locate, marked only by kick off a change in the light, a slope review of the ground. Will Cohu doesn’t concentrate on the pit but rather on nearby Bramble Carr, the remote moorland cottage to which his grandparents moved in 1966memoir? Do you know, almost on a whim and certainly with insufficient thoughtI really don't think I can. George Brook was a manager at ICI in Billingham Dave is an author and Dorothy was an artist . An inspirational speaker and musiciana professional horseman. They’d been brought together by And a shared love recovering alcoholic. The son of a Lutheran minister, he's struggled with a controlling father, run away to join the arts but once installed at Bramble Carr circus (not a metaphor), trained horses, painted caravans, designed and painted theatre sets, and with little more than each other for company hit rock bottom when the marriage deteriorated into dark silencebottle took over.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099542358</amazonuk>B0965V3LLN
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008350388
|title=We Need to Talk About Money
|author=Otegha Uwagba
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Wakefield0571365884|title=Kurt VonnegutMy Mess is a Bit of Life: LettersAdventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia Pritchett
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''Kurt Vonnegut: Letters'' is Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as a fascinating tome of personal correspondences between one of child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the greats in American literature and bed were comfortable: it was the several individuals sort of life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and institutions whose paths he’d crossedfar between. Written from the early forties up until 2007 On a visit to a therapist, the year of Vonnegut's untimely deathas an adult, these letters enable readers when she was completely unable to understand the workings of the mind behind classics such as ''Slaughterhouse-Five'' speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and ''Cat's CradleMy Mess is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety''is the result - or so we are given to believe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099582937</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neil AnsellDaniel Gibbs with Teresa H Barker|title=Deer IslandA Tattoo on my Brain
|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Neil Ansell volunteered in the 1980s to work for an organization Alzheimer's is a disease that provided support for the homelessslowly wears away your identity and sense of self. These homeless were the people other shelters would reject for various reasons (drink, drugs, etc.) but the group Neil worked for were a little different to most similar charities. Due to I have been directly affected by this Neil experienced some of the worst case scenarios of being down and out in Londoncruel disease, and along the way befriended as have many interesting but ultimately ill-fated people. To escape Your memories and recover from personality worn away like a life full of brief friendships, poverty and untimely death Neil travelled to statue over time affected the Isle of Jura off the West coast of Scotlandelements. Jura came to be a special place for him It seems as if nature wants that final victory over you and of all places in the world it was the one most in his heartyour dignity. This is what makes Daniel Gibbs' memoir so admirable. Deer Island Daniel Gibbs is Neil’s account of his life in the 1980s a neurologist who was diagnosed with Alzheimers and has documented his discovery of Jura; it is, journey in effect, his love song to the island that has been his sanctuary''A Tattoo on my Brain''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908213132</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.''
The stereotypical farmer was probably born on the land where ''his'' family have farmed for generations. He's probably grown up without giving much thought as to what he really wants to do: he knows that he'll be a farmer. It's not always the case though. Hannah Jackson was born and brought up on the Wirral: she'd never set foot on a commercial farm until she was twenty although she'd always had a deep love of animals. Her original intention was that she would become 'Dr Jackson, whale scientist' and she was well on her way to achieving this when her life changed on a family holiday to the Lake District. She saw a lamb being born and, although 'Hannah Jackson, farmer' lacked the kudos of her original intention, she knew that she wanted to be a shepherd. With the determination that you'll soon realise is an essential part of her, she set about achieving her ambition.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kristine Barnett0008333173|title=The SparkHungry: A Mother's Story Memoir of Nurturing Genius Wanting More|author=Grace Dent
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=The tutor stands at I'm always relieved when Grace Dent is one of the front judges on ''Masterchef''. You know that you're going to get an honest opinion from someone whom you sense does real food rather than fine dining most of the university class, frantically scribbling equations time. You also ponder on the large whiteboard how she can look so elegant with all that good food in front of himher. He I've often wondered about the woman behind the media image and ''Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More'' is well respected by his students; an expert in several fields, including general relativity, string theory, quantum field theory a stunning read which will make you laugh and biophysics. In fact, he recently unveiled a brand new theory that may put him break your heart in line for a Nobel Prizeequal measures. Oh, and did I forget to mention that he is just 14 years old?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241145627</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Dawson1504321383|title=Pigs in Clover: Or How I Accidentally Fell in Love with the Good LifeSingle, Again, and Again, and Again|author=Louisa Pateman
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Simon Dawson really had no intention of leading a life of self-sufficiency - he accidentally fell into the beginnings of it at a New Year's Eve party which was a little too noisy for him to 'You can't be completely certain what it was he was agreeing tohappy and fulfilled on your own. But even then there was no need for it to go too far. After all, this You are not complete until you find a man's heart was in London and he was an estate agent - a member of the profession whose place at the top of the opprobrium ladder was only made wobbly after a serious PR campaign on behalf of journalists and politicians. But his wife was determined that she couldn't stand being a property solicitor any longer and so they sold their flat in London and rented a property on Exmoor and Simon began a weekly commute - weekends in Devon and most of the week in London.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780285019</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colin GrantSakinu Ahronglong|title=Bageye at the Wheel: A 1970s Childhood in SuburbiaHunter School|rating=34.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Growing up as one The flyleaf to this little collection tells us that it is a work of the few black children in Luton fiction. That's possibly misleading. I am not sure whether it is "fiction" in the 1970ssense that Ahronglong made it all up, Colin Grant was in awe of his father, always known or whether it is as Bageye. In this memoir of his childhoodthe blurb goes on to say ''recollections, he looks back at his own early years folklore and autobiographical stories''. It feels like the latter. It feels like the impact stories he tells about his feckless dad - and his friendsexperiences as a child, or sparsas an adolescent, such as Summer Wearan adult are real and true. But memory is a fickle thing, Tidy Boots, Anxious and Pioneer - had on himmaybe 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>0099552396</amazonuk>1999791282
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Malcolm Philips1544641923|title=Jobsworth: Confessions of the Man from the CouncilAmbassadors Do It After Dinner|author=Sandra Aragona
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Local government isn’t what it used It's tempting to think that the diplomatic life is privileged and luxurious. It might be. People say this with regretprivileged, but reading Malcolm Philips’ memoir you will probably be left with the impression family connections tell me that this it is a Very Good Thingfar from luxurious. Because fun as Now you're not going to get many ambassadors telling you what it may have been 's really like (it's not ''diplomatic'' to be working in do so, you know), but the council in diplomatic spouse, the 60s and 70saccompanying baggage, if this entertaining account is anything to go bywell, that's an entirely different matter. She (and it was also an awful shamblesstill usually is a 'she') can tell us exactly what goes on. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909183156</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna Quindlen0241446732|title=Lots Our House is on Fire: Scenes of Candlesa Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Plenty of CakeBeata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyPolitics and Society|summary=I first encountered Anna Quindlen when I read [[Life with Beau: A Tale The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of a Dog and His Family by Anna Quindlen|Life with Beau: A Tale the parenting of a Dog and His Family]]their two daughters. I'm a sucker for nonThen eleven-year-fiction books about dogs but old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what struck me was that the book could have been tritehappening. Instead In such circumstances, it was elegant's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, witty and with a real eye for detail and social nuance. It was genuinely about life it became clear to the family that they were ''withburned-out people on a burned-out planet'' Beau and what the family learned from him rather than - as so many such books are - what the family had done for the dog. The book struck If they were to find a particular chord with me as our older dog was, we knew, on borrowed time (although her innate stubbornness kept her going for another two years) and Quindlen helped me way to live happily again their solution would need to think about what Rosie had given usbe radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955903X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mac Carty191280493X|title=The Vagaries Of Swing (Footprints on the Margate Sands Coming of Time)Age|author=Danny Ryan
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Mac Carty tells us that ''He began writing novels and poetry at the catalyst for 'The Vagaries age of Swing' twelve, but it was the BBC television series 'True Love' which portrayed to take him a series of romantic encounters further forty-eight years to realise that he wasn’t very good at either. Consistently unpublished for all set by the sea in his home town that time, he remains a shining example of Margatehope over experience... But Carty has taken the original idea - about relationships between people - and run with it, extending ''love'' into ''passion '', say for cricket, or (at the other end of the scale) as This a human encounter which ends in violence. Whilst the television series might memoir from someone you have been the catalyst for the book there was another and probably more compelling reason. When his friend Mike died he realised that he had no one with whom to share his fund never heard of stories about growing up in Margate, all of which had been revisited on a regular basis and usually over a pint- but will feel like you have. I've just read the result.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1291336761</amazonuk>'
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rupert Christiansen190874572X|title=I Know You're Going to be Happy: A Story of Love and BetrayalLetters from Tove|author=Tove Jansson (Author), Boel Westin (Editor), Helen Svensson (Editor), Sarah Death (Translator)|rating=3.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Kathleen Lyon, whose family were respectable and hard working but with no claim to celebrity other than a distant relationship to Back at the [[The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life beginning of John Bingham by Michael Jago|Earl of Clanmorris]] married Michael Christiansenthe century, scion of I went on holiday to Nepal. I met a newspaper family, in a fashionable London church in 1948. Both were talented wonderful Finnish woman and successful journalists and they were very much in lovewe became sort-of-friends. ''I know youcan're going to be happy'', wrote t remember if it was on that holiday or a senior Fleet Street figure and Rupert Christiansen wryly points out later one that this was too tempting Paula told me I really had to fateread Tove Jansson. There were two children of the marriage and when Rupert I do know that it was four and his sister Anna just a few months old Michael Christiansen announced to the family years later that a photographer from his paper would be coming to take pictures I finally acquired an English translation of them all that afternoon - The Summer Book, and he then told his wife that their eleven-year marriage was over I eagerly awaited the ''Sort Of'' translations of the rest of Jansson's work and he was leaving to live with his secretarydevoured them as soon as I could get my hands on them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721242</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mollie Moran1908745819|title=Aprons and Silver SpoonsSurfacing |author=Kathleen Jamie
|rating=5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=At Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. 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't like the tender age 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 14the author considering ''an older, young Mollie Browne was forced less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to put her idyllic childhood behind her and embark on that my love of the natural world , of work. Rebellious those aspects of the poetic and strong-willedlyrical that are about style not form, young Mollie had no intentions and substance most of working in her grandmother’s shop as her parents all, about connection. Of course, this book had planned and sought to escape her small-town life in rural Norfolkmy name on it. Fortunately for Mollie, a position It was available written for a scullery maid in a townhouse in Kensingtonme. Would this free spirit manage It would have found its way to make the transition from carefree days climbing trees me eventually. I am pleased to working 15 hour sessions of repetitive, back-breaking toil?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718159993</amazonuk>have it fall onto my path so quickly.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helga Weiss1906852472|title=Helga's DiaryWild Child: A Young Girl's Account of Life in Growing Up a Concentration CampNomad|author=Ian Mathie|rating=45
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=This seems to be quite For Ian Mathie fans there is good and bad news. Ian has come up with the missing link in his narrative, the story of a rare bookvery unusual childhood (yes, and I doubt if there will be too many further examples in the very years to comethat made him the amazing man he became). I donThe bad – well it't mean to say s hardly news two years later – is that Holocaust testimonies are thin on the groundbook is published posthumously. As always, for Iit've reviewed several on this site recentlys beautifully written, with many exciting moments. What I mean most enjoyed was the fact feeling that this is newly published and by an author who is still alivemany of the questions in Ian Mathie's later books are answered in ''Wild Child'' with a satisfying clunk. There is something a little heart-warming to know Seemingly all that this lady was living and able to be interviewed by her translator 's now left in 2011, and presumably able to answer his editorial notes and queries. Of course, that fact does highlight the selling point of this book – the author was a very young girl when WWII starteddrawer is unpublishable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670921416</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Jago1999811402|title=The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of Painting Snails|author=Stephen John BinghamHartley|rating=34.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=John BinghamIt's very difficult to classify ''Painting Snails'': originally I thought that as it's loosely based around a year on an allotment it would be a lifestyle book, 7th Baron Clanmorris, volunteered but you're not going to get advice on what to serve in plant when and where for the army at best results. The answer would be something along the outbreak lines of the Second World War, but his sight prevented front-line service 'try it and he joined MI5see'. Prior to this he’d been Then I considered popular science as Stephen Hartley failed his A levels, did an engineering apprenticeship, became a journalistbusker, working on the '’Hull Daily Mail’’ before moving to Fleet Streetfinally got into medical school and is now an A&E consultant (part-time). He I found a natural home out that there's an awful lot more to what goes on in MI5 and a considerable talent for interrogationMajor Trauma Centre than you'll ever glean from ''Casualty'', but that isn't really what the book's about. At There's a time when spies are thought of as being flamboyantlot about rock & roll, he was which seems to be the opposite - a smallreal passion of Hartley's life, bespectacled man who could easily blend but it didn't actually fit into the backgroundentertainment genre either. His greatest skill was that he was Did we have a patient listener. category for 'doing the impossible the hard way'? [[:Category:John Le Carre|John Le Carre]] has said Yep - that nobody who knew John and the work he was doing could have missed the description of Smiley in his [[Call for 's the Dead by John le Carre|first novel]]one. Le Carre was a junior colleague in MI5It's an autobiography.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849545138</amazonuk>
}}
