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[[Category:Biography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1788360702|title=Charles, The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author= Ben GraffEdzard Ernst|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the background of the scientific evidence. There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, logical reasoning to his ambitions.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1739805100|title=Loving the Enemy: Building bridges in a time of war|author=Andrew March|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary= ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the early days of the Nazi regime in the 1930s. Fred, a sensitive and thoughtful man, had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the time. Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetime. }}{{Frontpage|author=Will Brooker|title=The Truth About Lisa Jewell|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of the latest title, and struggling with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the result.|isbn=1529136024}}{{Frontpage|author= Martha Leigh|title= Invisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating= 5|genre= Biography|summary= Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of life. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|isbn=1800460384}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=Fifty Sounds|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary= Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.|isbn=1913097501}}{{Frontpage|author=Frederic Gros|title=A Philosophy of Walking|rating=5|genre= Politics and Society|summary= I confess I picked this one up from the library in my pre-lockdown forage of random stuff. Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the pages I have marked and return to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you in slowly. This one had me in the first two pages, wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.|isbn=1781688370}}{{Frontpage|author=Sharon Blackie|title=If Women Rose Rooted|rating=5|genre= Biography|summary= I normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the one I've borrowed. I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for a reason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|isbn=1912836017}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241446732|title=Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and her sister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to home, but eventually, it became clear to the family that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0648684806|title=Clara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1789017977|title=Ronnie and Hilda's Romance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. For a while, the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.}}{{Frontpage|author=Patti Smith|title=Year of the Monkey|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=On the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in America. |isbn=1526614758}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1912242052|title=O Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=3|genre=Art|summary=''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world''.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Graff_Find|title= Find Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating= 3.5|genre= Biography Autobiography|summary= When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his journal, he didn't take much notice of it. At the age of 24, Graff didn't realise the gravity of the pages he was holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1788034546</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|isbn=1789016304|title==[[The Man Who Ate the ZooWar and Love: Frank BucklandA family's testament of anguish, forgotten hero of natural history by Richard Girling]]endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=5|genre=Biography [[image:4.5star.jpg|linksummary=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] As a conservationist Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in Victorian England before the term existed, Frank Buckland occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was very much a man ahead entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of his time. Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and any biographer is immediately presented seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with a colourful tale liberal values who were resistant to tellGerman occupation. [[The Man Who Ate Most people believed that the Zoooccupation could never happen: Frank Bucklandeven those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, forgotten hero of natural history by Richard Girling|Full Review]]<br> <br> <!-- Williams -->that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's an atrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.}}{{Frontpage*[[image:Williams_Captain.jpg|leftisbn=1786893452|linktitle=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1546280804?ieThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=UTF8&tagDina Nayeri|rating=thebookbag-21&linkCode4.5|genre=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1546280804]]Biography|summary===[[Captain Ronald Campbell Here in the West, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of Bombala Stationthose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, Cambalong: His Military Life and Times by Ivor George Williams]]=== [[image:4staralmost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to the world and the situations that refugees find themselves in.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He It's rare that we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in command the middle of the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth revolution in Iran, fleeing to Sydney, Australia: his wife and young son accompanied himAmerica as a ten-year-old. He was not destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at }}{{Frontpage|isbn=0857058320|title=Lord Of All the age of 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to raise their two young sonsuncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. EdwardsCercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle' s death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to managethe Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, she was also responsible for is the convicts figure who worked looms large over the landbook. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald CampbellHe died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. [[Captain Ronald Campbell The question at the centre of Bombala Station, Cambalong: His Military Life and Times by Ivor George Williams|Full Review]]this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the wrong side.<br>}}{{Frontpage<!-- Seward -->|isbn=1788037812*[[image:Seward Husband.jpg|left|linktitle=httpsThe Fraternity of the Estranged://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1471159558?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbagThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-21&linkCode1908|author=as2&campBrian Anderson|rating=1634&creative5|genre=6738&creativeASIN=1471159558]]Biography|summary===[[My Husband and I: The Inside Story of 70 Years of Originally passed in 1885, the Royal Marriage by Ingrid Seward]]=== [[image:4law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years.5starBut during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men:Category:Biography|Biography]] I'm writing this review on Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the eve of heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the seventieth anniversary margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the wedding European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the Queen and the Duke publications of Edinburgh: it's an amazing achievement particularly when you add these men were hugely significant – contributing to the difficulties scientific understanding of maintaining any relationship for that period of time homosexuality, and beginning the burden of the Queen being our monarch struggle for sixty-five years recognition and equality, leading to the challenges milestone legalisation of having to live their joint and separate lives same-sex relationships in the public eye1967. Ingrid Seward gives us the story of the marriage and insights into both parties, particularly Prince Philip. [[My Husband and I: The Inside Story of 70 Years of the Royal Marriage by Ingrid Seward}}{{Frontpage|Full Review]]isbn=Buckland_Zoo<br> <!-- Peacock -->*[[image:Peacock_mountain.jpg|left|linktitle=httpsThe Man Who Ate the Zoo://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1903385563?ieFrank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=UTF8&tagRichard Girling|rating=thebookbag-21&linkCode4.5|genre=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1903385563]]Biography|summary===[[Into The MountainAs a conservationist in Victorian England before the term existed, A Life Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of Nan Shepherd by Charlotte Peacock]]=== [[image:4his time.5star.jpg|link=Category:Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, and any biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.}}{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:BiographyFrontpage|isbn=Williams_Captain|Biography]]title=Captain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station,[[Cambalong:Category:History|History]]His Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams|rating=4Mostly we choose what books to read, because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand |genre=Biography|summary=In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the troops and we sell the myriad lesser known authors short as well. So whileconvicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, like most other people I have my favourite genresAustralia: his wife and young son accompanied him. He was not destined to live a long life, and favoured authors, and whiledying suddenly at the age of 34 at Bangalore, like most other people I read the reviews and follow up on what appeals, I also have leaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in a third string to my reading bowdifficult position: randomness. [[Into The Mountainnot only did she have their farm to manage, A Life of Nan Shepherd by Charlotte Peacock|Full Review]]but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the land. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.<br>}}{{Frontpage<!-- Hewitt -->|isbn=Peacock_mountain|title=Into The Mountain, A Life of Nan Shepherd*[[image:Hewitt_Renoir.jpg|leftauthor=Charlotte Peacock|linkrating=https://www4.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1785782738?ie5|genre=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1785782738]]Biography===[[Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|linksummary=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]], [[:Category:Art|Art]] Deep in Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the rural parts of France in the 1860sapproach, you would never really expect to find someone who would come to embody a full artistic period – and not just a movement at thatbut I also think we sell ourselves short by it, but a full generation of both creative and societal change. And if you were to expect that someone, they would like we sell the myriad lesser-known authors short as not be malewell. But almost stumbling into the hedonistic culture of Montmartre came Marie-Clementine Valadon. She started in the circus that first caught her teenaged eyeSo while, although her gymnastic career was short-lived. But what she did like most other people I have from that was the poise to be an appealing model for some seriously important paintersmy favourite genres, and a natural beauty favoured authors, and figure to appeal to both them while, like most other people I read the reviews and their audiences. And follow up on what she also hadappeals, much to the surprise of many and the distaste of some, was artistic talent of her own… [[Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon by Catherine Hewitt|Full Review]]<br> <!I also have a third-- Ravilious -->*[[imagestring to my reading bow:Ravilious_James.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1908524944?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1908524944]] ===[[James Ravilious: A Life by Robin Ravilious]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] The name of Eric Ravilious, war artist, engraver and designer, has long been familiar. Less well-known was his equally gifted son James. This delightful biography by his widow should help to put the situation right. [[James Ravilious: A Life by Robin Ravilious|Full Review]]<br> <br> <br> <!-- Thomas -->*[[image:Thomas_Pearl.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/144566125X?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=144566125X]] ===[[The King's Pearl: Henry VIII and His Daughter Mary by Melita Thomas]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] As the eldest surviving child of a much-married father whose main aim was to secure the royal succession with sons, Mary Tudor's relationship with Henry VIII, who called her his 'pearl of the world', was inevitably an important and often fraught one.[[The King's Pearl: Henry VIII and His Daughter Mary by Melita Thomas|Full Review]]<br> <br> <br> <!-- Gordon -->*[[image:Gordon_Carter.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099575728?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0099575728]] ===[[The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] Angela Carter is remembered as an influential and inventive writer – with works like ''The Bloody Chamber'' and ''Nights at the Circus'' propelling her to fame, and a status as an icon and inspiration for many modern-day writers.Here author Edmund Gordon delves into the life of Carter – from the London of the 1940s through to the London of the 1990s, with stops in Bristol, Tokyo, Australia, and various other places in between. A work that is as full of detail as it is full of devotion to a remarkable woman, ''The Invention of Angela Carter'' is the first authorised biography of a woman and a writer who is hugely missed today. [[The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Dittricht -->*[[image:Dittrich_Patient.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099571862?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0099571862]] ===[[Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Popular Science|Popular Science]], [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] Luke Dittrich seeks to shed light on the man behind the initials, and in doing so, uncovers quite a bit more than he expected. [[Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich|Full Review]]<br> <br> <br> <br> <!-- Morris -->*[[image:Morris_Footsteps.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/144567114X?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=144567114X]] ===[[In the Footsteps of the Six Wives of Henry VIII: The visitor's companion to the palaces, castles & houses associated with Henry VIII's iconic queens by S Morris and N Grueninger]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:History|History]], [[:Category:Travel|Travel]], [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] It was inevitable that each of the six wives of Henry VIII would have left their mark in some way on the places they lived and visited. This book straddles several categories; it is part history, part gazetteer or guide book, and also a collection of potted biographies. [[In the Footsteps of the Six Wives of Henry VIII: The visitor's companion to the palaces, castles & houses associated with Henry VIII's iconic queens by S Morris and N Grueninger|Full Review]]<br> <br> <br> <!-- Breverton -->*[[image:Breverton_Owen.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1445654180?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1445654180]] ===[[Owen Tudor: Founding Father of the Tudor Dynasty by Terry Breverton]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]], [[:Category:History|History]] Owen Tudor was one of those shadowy yet very important characters in medieval history. While we may know little about him, or at least did not until this biography appeared, his historical importance can hardly be overestimated. Without him, there would have been no Tudor dynasty. [[Owen Tudor: Founding Father of the Tudor Dynasty by Terry Breverton|Full Review]]<br> <br> <!-- Landreth -->*[[image:Landreth_Swell.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1472938941?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1472938941]] ===[[Swell by Jenny Landreth]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Politics and Society|Politics and Society]], [[:Category:Sport|Sport]], [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] I love Jenny's own description of her book as a waterbiography and I love her encouragement that we should each write our own. This is more than just (I say ''just''!) a recollection of the author's own encounters with water; it's also a history of women's fight for the right to swim. That sounds absurd until you start reading about it, then it becomes serious. Not too serious though – because Jenny Landreth is clearly a lover of the absurd. Not a lover of book blurbs myself, I do always seek to give a shout-out to those who get it dead right: in this case I'm definitely with Alexandra Heminsley's ''giggles-on-the-commute funny''. [[Swell by Jenny Landreth|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Blackburn -->*[[image:Blackburn_Threads.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099582198?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0099582198]] ===[[Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske by Julia Blackburn]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]], [[:Category:Art|Art]] John Craske was a fisherman, from a family of fishermen, who became too ill to go to sea. He was born in Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast in 1881 and would eventually die in the Norwich hospital in 1943 after a life which could have been defined by ill health. There were various explanations for what ailed him, what caused him to sink into a stupour, sometimes for years at a time and he was on occasions described as 'an imbecile'. But John had a natural artistic talent, albeit that his work had to be done on the available surfaces in his home. Chair seats, window sills, the backs of doors all carried his wonderful pictures of the sea. Then he moved on to embroidery, producing wonderful pictures of the Norfolk coast - and, most famously, of the evacuation at Dunkirk. [[Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske by Julia Blackburn|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Elkin -->*[[image:Elkin_Flaneuse.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099593378?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0099593378]] ===[[Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:History|History]], [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]] Lauren Elkin is down on suburbs: they're places where you can't or shouldn't be seen walking; places where, in fiction, women who transgress boundaries are punished (thinking of everything from ''Madame Bovary'' to ''Revolutionary Road''). When she imagines to herself what the female version of that well-known historical figure, the carefree ''flâneur'', might be, she thinks about women who freely wandered the world's great cities without having the more insalubrious connotation of the word 'streetwalker' applied to them. [[Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Jones -->*[[image:Jones_Black.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1784972932?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1784972932]] ===[[The Black Prince by Michael Jones]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] Generally known during and shortly after his lifetime as Edward of Woodstock, after the palace in Oxfordshire in which he was born, the eldest son of King Edward III was arguably one of the Kings that never was. At last we have a modern biography to put him in his proper perspective. [[The Black Prince by Michael Jones|Full Review]]<br> <br> <br> <!-- Hoffman -->*[[image:Hoffman_Billion.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1785781979?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1785781979]] ===[[The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal by David E Hoffman]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] With the Cold War at its frostiest, there were few tougher locations for western intelligence agencies to try and run an agent than 1970s Moscow. That makes the tale of Adolf Tolkachev, a Russian engineer who provided thousands of top secret documents to the Americans right under the noses of the KGB, all the more incredible. [[The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal by David E Hoffman|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Moore -->*[[image:Moore Buddha.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/9381182299?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=9381182299]] ===[[Buddha: An Enlightened Life (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Kieron Moore and Rajesh Nagulakonda]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Graphic Novels|Graphic Novels]], [[:Category:Biography|Biography]] I don't do religion, but still there was something that drew me to this comic book. For one, the whole Buddhist faith is still a little unknown to me, and this was certainly going to be educational. Yes, I knew some of the terms it ends up using, but not others, such as bhikshu, and had never really come across the man's life story. Yes, I knew he found enlightenment and taught a very pacifist kind of faith, but where did he come from? What failings did he have on his path, and who were the ones that joined him along the way? [[Buddha: An Enlightened Life (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Kieron Moore and Rajesh Nagulakonda|Full Review]]<br> <!-- Arman -->*[[image:Arman_Warrior.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazonrandomness.co.uk/gp/product/1445662043?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1445662043]] ===[[The Warrior Queen: The Life and Legend of Aethelflaed, Daughter of Alfred the Great by Joanna Arman]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Biography|Biography]]