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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonny Steinberg1788360702|title=Little LiberiaCharles, The Alternative Prince: An African Odyssey in New York CityUnauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst

|summary=South African Steinberg For over forty years, Prince Charles has won awards with previous non-fiction books been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and after reading the praise from various sources (New York Times, J M Coetzee) I came to the conclusion that I was in for a serious and thought-provoking readcomplementary therapies. ''Charles, The preface tells us that Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the two Liberian men - Rufus Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the younger Jacob left Liberian soil in vastly different circumstances and for different reasonsbackground of the scientific evidence. But as they meet up years later There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and thousands his relentless promotion of miles away from their homeland, their ''Little Liberia'' in New York City treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of a tall order: man who is proud of his refusal to contain and accommodate their big personalities and apply evidence-based, logical reasoning to a certain extent, their big egoshis ambitions. Can it cope?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224085662</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward Pearce1739805100|title=Pitt Loving the ElderEnemy: Man of War|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, and Prime Minister from 1766 to 1768, has come down to us through the ages as the great eighteenth century equivalent of Winston Churchill, one of the great men of the British Empire in its earlier days, and the man who led England triumphantly through the Seven Years War of 1756-63. During the 'year of victories' Building bridges in 1759, Quebec was captured, the combined English and Prussian forces defeated the French at Minden, and the army won a famous victory at Quiberon Bay. For this, Pitt took – or was accorded by generations time of historians – much of the credit.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951433</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewwar|author=Tracy Kidder|title=Mountains Beyond MountainsAndrew March

|summary=Dr Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to helping the poorest and neediest in society. He works tirelessly to help people less fortunate than him. ''Dedicated his lifeLoving the Enemy'' and tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March''works tirelessly'' - phrases we've heard many times about many wonderful peoples grandparents, but who first met when reading ''Mountains Beyond Mountains'', you'll realise there's not a shred grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the early days of hyperbole about these claimsthe Nazi regime in the 1930s. Farmer began working with tuberculosis and AIDS patients in HaitiFred, a sensitive and then worked with themthoughtful man, and worked for them, and worked with them, and worked for them, and worked with them. In an area where treating had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the disease is just one part of growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the problem, where poverty is rife, he has transformed an area, saved countless lives, and made an incredible difference time. Fred's attempts to many separate individual people. [http://www.pih.org/ Partners In Health], the healthcare organisation from ideology weren't universally successful but he set up with his colleagues, takes this work worldwidedid make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetime. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846684315</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Molly CarrWill Brooker|title=In Search of Dr Watson - A Sherlockian InvestigationThe Truth About Lisa Jewell|rating=3.5

|summary=The old saying that behind every great man there is a great woman has Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one major exception - Sherlock Holmesof the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. Behind him is This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the figure two closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of Dr John Watsonher anecdote about cup cakes, his biographerthe 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 man author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who shares his Baker St lodgingshas swallowed Roland Barthes, and down the man eternally flummoxed by his deductionsrabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. This biography successfully shows how 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 superior Holmes walked over Watson next in investigative skillsline. Jewell, and also how Conan Doyle needed Watsondue diligence appropriately done, if only to help us admire Holmes more by making him less insufferably smugagrees. And this is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907685766</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lindsay ReadeMartha Leigh|title=Mr Manchester and the Factory GirlInvisible Ink: The Story of Tony and Lindsay WilsonA Family Memoir|rating=45|genre=EntertainmentBiography|summary=Mr Manchester, as Tony Wilson came to be known, could have been the next John Humphrys. Instead he ended up becoming the next Malcolm McLaren – or, perhaps, Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a far less successful version of Richard Branson. After graduating from Cambridge University with childhood spent in a degree in slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English he became family. Her father is a trainee news reporter for ITNCambridge don, and for much forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life he worked as an anchorman for regional evening news programmes's work. Yet he Her mother is less remembered a concert pianist who practises for this than for his championship of alternative music and punk rock, founding of Factory Records and involvement with the Hacienda Clubhours every day. Although he loved Neither parent is hugely interested in the Beatles and folk music in general, he disliked much practicalities of the contemporary music scene until he saw the Sex Pistols live life. There is love in the summer of 1976house but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0859654567</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bevis HillierPolly Barton|title=The Wit and Wisdom of G K ChestertonFifty Sounds

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=GWhere 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.KI may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. Chesterton (1874-1936)And like Barton, best known as I don't know the answer to the creator question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the clerical detective Father Brownquestion in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, seems 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 slipped a little among to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the general reading public's estimation these dayspages 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 surely unmerited, for he was just as versatile as and hardly less quotable than the Victorian enfant terriblenot a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1441179585</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rosamund BartlettSharon Blackie|title=Tolstoy: A Russian LifeIf Women Rose Rooted

|genre=Biography|summary=Count Lev Tolstoy came from I normally say that you can tell how much a privileged familybook means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. He was born on 28 August 1828; unfailingly superstitious for the rest Perhaps an even greater measure of his days, he therefore adopted 28 as his lucky number. Like most young men from a similar background, he joined impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the Russian armyone I've borrowed. The Crimean war proved I want to be the making of him in that avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it developed his social conscience, opened his eyes to the conditions endured by those born to a less lofty position in is definitely the social order than himself, first two and impressed on him only time will tell about the fervent belief that everybody in Russia ought to have the chance to learn to read and write. As a result he became third – but clichés exist for a born-again repentant nobleman in the light of having seen how the other half (or more than half) lived, he took a long hard look at the world around him, turning into a rebel against organized religion reason and the authority of the state in the process. All this was exacerbated by his travels throughout Europe shortly afterwards, in which he was impressed with the comparative freedom he saw in other countries and then found the return to his homeland thoroughly depressing in the few years before the emancipation of the serfsI'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846681383</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=0241446732|title=Valerie Benaim Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and Yves Azerouala Planet in Crisis|titleauthor=Nicolas Sarkozy Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Carla Bruni: The True StorySvante Thunberg|rating=3.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=In November 2007 the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was newly divorced from his second wife an opera singer and, despite his position and busy life, feeling rather lonelySvante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of their two daughters. He accepted an invitation to a dinner party from a friend Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and met supermodel talking and recording artisther sister, Carla BruniBeata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. The attraction between them was instant – she had already said that she wanted In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a man with nuclear power and he was smitten by solution close to home, but eventually, it became clear to the attentions of family that they were ''burned-out people on a beautiful, famous and intelligent womanburned-out planet''. Within months If they were marriedto find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0907633145</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roland Huntford0648684806|title=Race for the South PoleClara Colby: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and AmundsenInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=In 1910 two European ships set out for The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the AntarcticUSA. 'Terra Nova' At the time she was carrying British explorers under the leadership just three-years-old but because of Captain Robert Scottsome childhood ailment, while she wasn'Fram' sailed t allowed to sail with a rival Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsenher parents and three brothers. The basic facts can be briefly summarized. Amundsen arrived at the South Pole Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on 14 December 1911 her and returned home to saw that she received a hero's welcomegood education, while Scott reached both in and out of school. She was the same destination 35 days later, only to perish with his men on child in the return journeyhousehold and her childhood was glorious. Their bodies were found by a search party some eight months after they By contrast, her family had died.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441169822</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Charles Margerison|title=Amazing Women: Inspirational Stories|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=The cover of this book tells become pioneer farmers in the reader that these short ''bioviews'' or biographies can be read in 10 mins or so. This is one of a series within ''The Amazing People Club'' courtesy mid-west of the ''Amazing People Team''. There is a rather fulsome ''Author's Note'' followed by a one-page introduction. I United States and life was immediately struck by the fact thathard, given the various feats of these women, I as Clara was anxious to read about them - find out when she and not about Dr Margerison. Less is more. He goes on her grandparents eventually went to say (by now I'm getting a bit tired of join the smiling Margerison) that 'The stories are inspirational and can help you achieve your ambitions in your own journey through lifefamily.' All of this and especially that last sentence sits rather uneasily with me, I'm afraid.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921629940</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Selina Hastings|title=The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=These days, W. Somerset Maugham seems to be something of an anachronism. In his heyday, Clara would only know her mother for much of a career which lasted from the end of the Victorian era to the 1950s, he few months: she was one of the most successful and widely read of all British writersmarried for fifteen years, with his novelshad ten pregnancies, short stories seven surviving children and plays spawning more film adaptations than any other author. Yet over the last thirty years or so he seems to have slipped from favour, as if his preoccupation with the Edwardian England in which he grew up and his end-of-empire settings are deeply embedded died in an age we would rather forget. Moreover, as this very comprehensive biography demonstrates, he was childbirth not the most pleasant of individualslong after Clara arrived. The unhappy child, orphaned by As the time he was teneldest girl, afflicted with a lifelong stammer heavy burden would fall on Clara and brought up by an aunt and uncle who showed him no affection, grew up to lead Wisconsin was a long and unhappy liferude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719565553</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew McConnell Stott1789017977|title=The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness Ronnie and the Story of BritainHilda's Greatest ComedianRomance: Towards a New Life after World War II|author=Wendy Williams

|summary=Meet Martin DavidsonRonnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. Now, when I start my reviews like that, normally it means he's the main character, but heThere's some doubt as to whether or not here. Hethey were ever married or even Harry's big birthdate: he claimed to have been born in the world of BBC History documentaries1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and grew up in the UK, half Scottish and half German, knowing that many of he might well have shaved a few years off his older relatives lived through the Second World Warage. Foremost among them For a while, the family was his German grandfather, Bruno Langbehn, who would have been of fighting age quite well-to- do but disaster struck in his 30s the 1929 Depression and five-year- during the Third Reichold Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. Nothing much One thing he did inherit from his father was ever said about Bruno's own history during the war, except for many inflammatory, rising comments by Bruno himselfhis need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. It took the old man to die for He joined the truth to be admitted by Martin's mother - their forefather was army at eighteen in the SS1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670916161</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sjeng ScheijenPatti Smith|title=Diaghilev: A LifeYear of the Monkey|rating=4.5

|summary=Sergey Diaghilev was one On the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the towering figures in lunar year of the artistic world of Russiamonkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and indeed Europeunexpected moments. In a stranger's words, at ''Anything is possible: after all, it's the start year of the 20th centurymonkey''. Born in 1872 As Smith wanders the ambitious son coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a bankrupt vodka producer from Perm, year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and a mother who died a few days later probably from puerperal fever, by his early twenties he was ageing are faced head-on close terms with such names as Tolstoy, Zola, Tchaikovsky and Brahms. He worked his way into the ranks of the cultural cognoscenti at St Petersburg and launched the itinerant troupe which would become the Ballets Russes, playing to packed houses as far west as Britain and it the United Statesshifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846681642</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Howarth1912242052|title=We Die AloneO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=Consider taking a five day sail in a small fishing boat ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the height of first person to walk the North Sea from Shetlandmountains alone, not because he had to try and establishfor work, train and supply some potentially vital anti-German resistance in the faras a miner, far north of occupied Norwayquarryman, your homeland. Imagine the sight of heavy naval parades where you intended to landshepherd or pack-horse driver, as galling proof that your intel is ages out of date. Ponder too the fact that you get reported but because he wanted to the Nazis due to the most ridiculous slight of fortunefor pleasure and adventure. All your colleagues are dead or captured, your equipment blown up His rapturous encounters with your trawler to keep it safe from Jerry handstheir natural beauty, half your big toe has been shot offand its literary consequences, and youchanged our view of the world're forced to go on the run in one of Europe's last, and coldest, wildernesses. And you have no idea whatsoever quite how bad this scenario is going to get.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678459</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Janet SoskiceGraff_Find|title=Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Sisters of Sinai tells the story of two extraordinary, Victorian women who unearthed an important early copy of the Gospels from a remote monastery in Egypt. It hardly seems possible that they organised and executed such remarkable feats of unaccompanied travel during an age in which women's freedom was hidebound by their status as the inferior sex. Janet Soskice is well-placed as a feminist philosopher and theologian to explore their lives.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954654X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFind Another Place|author=Natasha McElhone|title=After You: Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and FatherBen Graff

|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=What would you do if, without warning, your brilliant, loving, superman partner died from When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a catastrophic heart event at the untimely age plastic folder of 43handwritten notes from his journal, leaving you with two young boys and a third on the way? Most he didn't take much notice of us would probably reach for it. At the Valium and book a very long course age of counseling. But Natascha McElhone couldn24, Graff didn't because she was already stretched, juggling a busy transatlantic career as an actress as well as caring for her sparky young family. Coping as a single parent left no spare time for self-indulgence; within months she had a new baby as well. So she found her own way, grabbing instead at odd moments to write in her well-established diary. These short entries … e-mails, almost … to her dead husband form realise the basis gravity of 'After You'the pages he was holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919098</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Firstbrook1789016304|title=The ObamasWar and Love: The Untold Story of an African Family|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=The book jacket states that this is 'the untold story of an African A family' and with a presidential photograph s testament of Barack Obamaanguish, the book is certainly eye-catching. Along with, I'm sure, millions of others, I've read 'The Audacity Of Hope' and was charmed endurance and blown away devotion in almost equal measure, so I was keen to get started on this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092725</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewoccupied Amsterdam|author=Stefan Klein|title=Leonardo's Legacy: How Da Vinci Reinvented the WorldMelanie Martin

|summary=This excellent combination Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of science history Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and biography starts with seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the most populist war years, but only five thousand survived and some of the most awkwardly scientificMartin could not understand how this could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Basically it throws modern-day science at Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Mona Lisa, which you Germans might think is a little unfair – can she cope with being analysedreach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, and that the neuroscience we now know used Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in interpreting her? Of course she can – she’s the world’s best-known masterpiece of Italian artway that it did, and she’s survived much worsebut initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. Klein’s approach fully works, when we see also the science da Vinci did know and that he worked It's an atrocity on himself, which all helps us know partly why the truths a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of La Gioconda are still unknowableindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0306818256</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Valerie Grove1786893452|title=So Much To TellThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=Kaye Webb’s career would be Here in the envy of many West, we see news reports about immigrants on a young bookwormregular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. From 1961 But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and almost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to 1978 she ran Puffin Books, the children’s division of Penguinworld and the situations that refugees find themselves in. I still have some paperbacks It's rare that we find out the journeys from the refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that time with “Kaye Webb – Editor” on , in this intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the first page inside the front covermiddle of a revolution in Iran, fleeing to America as a ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846142008</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matt MacAllester0857058320|title=Bittersweet: Lessons from my Mother's KitchenLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)

|summary=Matt MacAllester ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, used journey to covering the horrors of war, but nothing prepared him for his investigation into uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death of . Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his mother Annegreat uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. In May 2005 Ann MacAllester Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the figure who looms large over the book. He died suddenly of a heart attack and her son was overwhelmed by griefrelatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. This might not sound unusual, but Cercas ruminates on why his mother had been largely absent from him uncle fought for about a quarter of a century, trapped in her own private world of madnessthis dictator. His earliest memories were of an idyllic childhood, where wonderful food was always The question at the centre of family life and with the help of Elizabeth David, this book is whether it is possible for his mother’s favourite cookery writer he sought great uncle to find his mother through be a hero whilst having fought for the food she cookedwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408800942</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Welch and Lucian Randall1788037812|title=Ginger GeezerThe Fraternity of the Estranged: The Life of Vivian StanshallFight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=RedheadsOriginally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, they sayrestrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, feel more pain than three books on the rest nature of ushomosexuality appeared. They may even have a layer were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of skin too few. However literally true this might besociety and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, it certainly seems so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to be the case for Vivian Stanshall. As his second wife says in this excellent bookscientific understanding of homosexuality, 'There's nothing between him and all beginning the sensations struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the world has to give us'milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841156795</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donald SpotoBuckland_Zoo|title=High Society: Grace Kelly and Hollywood|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=In his defence, we must acknowledge Spoto's subtitle. It underlines that this does not in any way shape or form claim to be a biography of The Man Who Ate the American actress who become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco. It is an analysis of her film careerZoo: a consideration of the "Hollywood years".|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515377</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alison Maloney|title=St George: Let's Hear it for England!|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=I was a bit of a patriot, even when it wasn't as fashionable as it is now becoming. Perhaps this is due to my once having played St. George in a Cub Scout celebration and getting the chance to personally slay the dragon in knitted chain mail with a plastic sword. In a world where being English has become synonymous with football violence and the flag of St. George is being used by a political party condemned as racist, it's perhaps unsurprising that more people celebrate St. Patrick's Day than St. George's Day.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848092628</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Douglas Rogers|title=The Last Resort|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Author Douglas Rogers is a Zimbabwean who moved awayfrom the country many years agoFrank Buckland, but has never been able to persuadehis parents – two white farmers, Lyn and Roz – to follow him out forgotten hero oftheir homeland, despite the resettlement policies of Robert Mugabe,the hyper-inflation, and the corruption in the country. Instead, thepair just wanted to stay on the farm welcoming people to Drifters,their backpackers' lodge.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906021910</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewnatural history|author=Tracy Kidder|title=Strength in What Remains|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary='Strength in What Remains' is the inspirational account of Deogratias, a man who has fled from the genocide and civil war in Burundi (just south of the equator in East Central Africa, bordering Rwanda). He escapes to New York, out of fear and want of a safer life; only his new found American life isn't quite what it promised.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>186197857X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Catrine Clay|title=Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup LegendRichard Girling

|summary='You have to learn to be hard men, to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'. Such did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies As a conservationist in Victorian England before the 1930s. He probably did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with term existed, Frank Buckland was very much a broken neck, such is the lifetime man ahead of difference between the two referenceshis time. But that lifetimeSurgeon, as packed naturalist, veterinarian and varied as it waseccentric sums him up perfectly, and any biographer is in the pages of this ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured bookimmediately presented with a colourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082884</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Angela ThirlwellWilliams_Captain|title=Into The Frame: The Four Loves Captain Ronald Campbell of Ford Madox Brown |rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Ford Madox BrownBombala Station, born in 1821 in Calais of a Scottish family, raised in France and Belgium before settling in England, was one of the foremost Victorian artists. Throughout his career he was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and shared many of their same ideals, style and subject matter, though he never officially became a member of the group.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701179023</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Chris Skidmore|title=Death and the VirginCambalong: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart |rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in November 1558, everyone's dominant concern was the matter of her taking an appropriate husband His Military Life and securing the succession. The man most likely to become her husband was Robert Dudley, whom she made her Master of the Horse and entrusted with considerable responsibility for her coronation festivities. The fact that he was already married to Amy Robsart did little to quell the speculation, especially since she was believed to be dying of breast cancer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297846507</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewTimes|author=Jad Adams|title=Gandhi: Naked AmbitionIvor George Williams

|summary=Until I read this bookIn March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in command of the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, Mohandas Karamchand (or Mahatma for short) Gandhi had always been a very shadowy figureAustralia: his wife and young son accompanied him. I He was familiar with not destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at the picture age of the loincloth-clad man who fell victim 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to an assassinraise their two young sons. Edwards's bullet shortly after Indian independencedeath left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but knew little moreshe was also responsible for the convicts who worked the land. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849162107</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue ShephardPeacock_mountain|title=Into The Surprising Mountain, A Life of Constance SpryNan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=The very mention of Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the name Constance Spry conjures up thoughts of flower arranging approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and books of recipes from a bygone erawe sell the myriad lesser-known authors short as well. Perhaps it was her misfortune that she died just before television could So while, like most other people I have made a celebrity of hermy favourite genres, as it did of the likes of Fanny Cradock and Nigella Lawsonfavoured authors, to name but two. Even so, she enjoyed a remarkably successful careerand while, like most other people I read the reviews and the woman behind the public face was no ordinary career womanfollow up on what appeals, but quite an unconventional personalityI also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230741819</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Rob Chapman|title=Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head |rating=5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Roger Barrett, who later acquired the moniker 'Syd' (let's make him Syd from now Move on) was born in Cambridge in 1946. The fourth of five children, he was the only one to inherit any lasting artistic talent, which came from his father Max. The latter was a senior pathologist, member of the local Philharmonic Society, gifted singer, pianist [[Newest Business and watercolour painter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238548</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Frances Stonor Saunders|title=The Woman Who Shot Mussolini|rating=4.5|genre=History|summary=Most British titled families of the 19th and 20th centuries have produced their fair share of rebels. Yet few came as close to changing the course of European history as the Honourable Violet Gibson, one of eight children of Baron Ashbourne, a Protestant Anglo-Irish peer and MP in Disraeli's government during the 1870s.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571239773</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Josephine Wilkinson|title=The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Before her marriage to King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn had already been courted by three suitors, any of whom might have become her husband - and possibly saved her from her eventual end on the scaffold. The first was her Irish cousin James Butler, later Earl of Ormond, whom she was at one time intended to marry in order to settle a family dispute over the title and estates of the Earldom of Ormond. After their marriage negotiations came to an end in the face of legal obstacles, she became betrothed to Henry Percy, heir to the Duke of Northumberland. With a little help from the scheming Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke, who had little time for his son, insisted that any idea of marriage between them should be dismissed forthwith. Soon after this the poet Thomas Wyatt became enamoured of her, but by this time there was fierce competition from his sovereign, and her destiny was sealed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848684304</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michele Monro|title=Matt Monro: The Singer's Singer|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=In terms of British chart statistics and record sales, Matt Monro never quite fulfilled his full potential. When measured against the achievements of contemporary ballad singers like Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, he fell some way short. Yet the former Terry Parsons was a regular fixture on the light entertainment circuit, and overseas, particularly in Latin America and the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one of Britain's most successful exports ever, and at one point he was the biggest selling artist in Spain. His idol Frank Sinatra, to whom he was often compared, often said that Matt was the only British singer he ever really listened to.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848566182</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Caroline Moorehead |title=Dancing to the Precipice : Lucie De La Tour Du Pin and the French Revolution|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Two hundred years ago, with the fall of the monarchy and the Napoleonic wars, France underwent one cataclysmic change after another. There were many who witnessed and experienced the volatile age at first hand, but few left a more detailed record than the subject of this biography, Lucie-Henriette Dillon, Marquise Marchioness de La Tour du Pin.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099490528</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=A.Roger Ekirch |title=Birthright: The True Story That Inspired Kidnapped|rating=4|genre=History|summary=They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and it is not unusual for novels to be based partly on fact. So it was in the case of Robert Louis Stevenson's ''Kidnapped'', Sir Walter Scott's ''Guy Mannering'', and at least three others, all of which can point to the saga of James Annesley for inspiration.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393066150</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Van der Kiste|title=William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another ''meaningful'' period – the Victorian era. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession to the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075094577X</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]