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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Holroyd1788360702|title=A Book of SecretsCharles, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers|rating=5|genre=The Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|summary=Picture the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptor, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridors of Lord Grimthorpe's mansion. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour of the balconies of the coastal villa at Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrast, energetically inspired to passionate love affairs. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous, like E.M.Forster, Virginia Woolf, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West and then there was that tempestuous iconoclast, D.H.Lawrence. Many such lives were inspired by both landscape and lust, fashioned by each other's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here we learn of talents and beauty that inspires artistic endeavour, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. She, who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends in the pages of annotated diaries which became ''A Book of Secrets''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548941</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Colin Grant|title=I & I: The Natural MysticsEdzard Ernst
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Just mention the word reggaeFor over forty years, and the name that nearly always springs to mind is that Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of Bob Marley alternative medicine and the Wailerscomplementary therapies. ''Charles, The music has always been very much a product of Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Jamaican culturePrince's opinions, nurtured in years beliefs and aims against the background of turbulent historythe scientific evidence. In this book Colin Grant, born in Britain There are few instances of Jamaican parents, goes back deep into its roots, his beliefs being vindicated and in his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the process examines the childhood lives reputation of a man who is proud of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Neville Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailerhis refusal to apply evidence-based, logical reasoning to provide an account of the group – but much more than thathis ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd1739805100|title=DickensLoving the Enemy: A Memoir Building bridges in a time of Middle Agewar|author=Andrew March|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=With publishers falling over each other in an effort ''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 outdo each other teach in celebrating the bicentenary early days of Charles Dickens’ birththe Nazi regime in the 1930s. Fred, it was perhaps inevitable that we should see a reappearance sensitive and thoughtful man, had some vague ideas of what has become "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the modern standard life, by Peter Ackroydtime. The 1200-page original was first published in 1990, while this 600-page abridged edition surfaced in 1994, Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and now makes another timely appearanceconnections that lasted for a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099437090</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul HendricksonWill Brooker|title=Hemingway's Boat: Everything he loved in life, and lost, 1934-1961The Truth About Lisa Jewell|rating=45
|genre=Biography
|summary=This substantial volume is not exactly a full biography Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of Ernest Hemingwaythe most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. In factNow meet Will Brooker, it might almost one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have been subtitled ‘The rise and fall’read. Its theme is more or less This book starts with the second half of his lifetwo meeting each other, from 1934as well, when he returned from an African safari and took delivery of his boat Pilar, to his tragic death 27 years latershows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. Hendrickson intends The meeting was some unspecified combination, it to be an account seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the writerwords of her latest book she was reciting, bringing together and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the different elements author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of his 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 – fishing, friendshipworking to make a success of the latest title, wives and family - and above allstruggling with the next in line. Jewell, naturallydue diligence appropriately done, his writingagrees. And this is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847921930</amazonuk>1529136024
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah BradfordMartha Leigh|title=Queen Elizabeth IIInvisible Ink: Her Life in Our TimesA Family Memoir|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=As Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a biographer who has previously written substantial biographies of the Queen (published childhood spent in 1996)a slightly eccentric, of her immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father George VIis a Cambridge don, and her daughter-inforever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the complete correspondence of the philosopher Jean-law DianaJacques Rousseau, Sarah Bradford needs little introductionhis life's work. Her mother is a concert pianist who practises for hours every day. At around 260 pages of text, this Neither parent is barely half hugely interested in the length practicalities of her other titles, and probably aimed more at life. There is love in the general reader with an eye on the Diamond Jubilee markethouse but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>067091911X</amazonuk>1800460384
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mick O'SheaPolly Barton|title=Amy Winehouse: A Losing GameFifty Sounds|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=At the risk of stating the obviousWhere do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, this is a sad book. Writing this review some five months after her death, now with the immediate smoke question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has cleared, it is apparent from this book (as well as other general sources) that she was a gifted performer, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her been on my radar for a lengthy career long after scores of aspiring Xwhile and if the world hadn't gone into melt-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorous, more steady careersdown I would have visited by now. After allI may get there later this year, her idols had been but I am not only near-contemporaries hopeful. And like Michael Jackson and Missy ElliottBarton, but also those I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of an earlier generation such as the classic 1960s girl groupsquestion in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennettbeing, among other things, with whom she was thrilled the sound of ''every party where you have to record a duet four months before she diedintroduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>1913097501
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matthew HollisFrederic Gros|title=Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years A Philosophy of Edward ThomasWalking
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Most historians tend to refer to Edwardian England as I confess I picked this one up from the thirteenlibrary in my pre-year interlude between the Victorian era and the shots at Sarajevo which precipitated the First World War, an era lockdown forage of relative stabilityrandom stuff. However, there had been ominous rumblings from the new order of things during the two years or so prior Now I have to June 1914, particularly from a new spirit among the younger literary generation. The old Victorian writers, notably the uniquely terrible Poet Laureate Alfred Austin (doubtless a very good man, but go out an almost comically inept writer of verse) were dismissed as irredeemably old hat by buy my own copy so that I can turn down the likes of Rupert Brooke pages I have marked and Wreturn to its varying wisdom when I need to.H. Davies. For a short time London was the poetry capital of the world, and the book opens with the opening Some books draw you in January 1913 of Harold Monro’s poetry bookshop in Bloomsbury, which rapidly became a magnet for the self-proclaimed Georgian poets and readers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571245986</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Julia Blackburn|title=Thin Paths: Journeys in and Around an Italian Mountain Village|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Julia Blackburn had known Herman for many years, but they had drifted apartslowly. She put the postcard which she received from him in an album: it mentioned a cottage he This one had discovered me in Liguria and which he was renovating. Some time later there was another postcard and an invitation to visit. Over time the cottage would become her home and Herman her husband. first two pages, wherein Gros explains why 'Thin Paths' walking is the stories of the people who inhabit this harsh, wild landscape and of the way in which the landscape has formed the people. The thin paths join the people and the places together in not a way of life which is raresport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090682</amazonuk>1781688370
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Erica HellerSharon Blackie|title=Yossarian Slept HereIf Women Rose Rooted
|rating=5
|genre=AutobiographyBiography|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'To live forever or die in ve finished reading the attemptone I've borrowed. I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' ' was the essential glory in life and living that -changing' – although it is at the heart of John Yossarian in [[Catch 22 by Joseph Heller|Catch 22]]. This autobiography of the daughter of his creator, Joseph Heller, reveals how definitely the same excitement first two and joie de vivre suffused throughout the Heller family. The harebrained unpredictability, only time will tell about the madcap exploits third – but clichés exist for a reason and relationships bowl us through this book with terrific pace and verveI'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570084</amazonuk>1912836017
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chambers and Joan Bakewell0241446732|title=Chambers Biographical Dictionary|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=It's now the ninth edition of this famous volume and that came as a bit Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a shock when I glanced at the bookcase and realised that my copy dated back to 1974 Family and was still in regular use for a quick guide as to who might have been who. It's advertised as 'the great, the good, the not-so-great and the downright wicked' and it's difficult to better that summary. It has eighteen thousand biographies and differs from ''Who's Who'' with it's thirty thousand entries Planet in that covers the dead as well as the living and the ''interesting'' rather than those who need to be included because they have achieved a certain position.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0550106936</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewCrisis|author=Claire Tomalin|title=Charles Dickens: A LifeMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Having already written biographies The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of Thomas Hardy the parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and Jane Austentalking and her sister, among othersBeata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. In such circumstances, it's natural to say nothing of seek a study of Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternansolution close to home, but eventually, Claire Tomalin is admirably qualified it became clear to produce the family that they were ''burned-out people on a major life of the author to mark the bicentenary of his birth in 1812burned-out planet''. (Sadly, she says this will If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be her last large-scale book)radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917672</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jermaine Jackson0648684806|title=You Are Not AloneClara Colby: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson in the two years since his sudden passing will be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge of his life and death, there will surely be few if any to rival this account by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve Dennis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007435665</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewThe International Suffragist|author=Graham Holderness|title=Nine Lives of William ShakespeareJohn Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=There is a subtle irony in The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the fact that USA. At the world’s besttime she was just three-years-known playwrightold but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and possibly the most famous author of all timethree brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, is who doted on her and saw that she received a character about whom so little is known for certaingood education, both in and out of school. She was the only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. NeverthelessBy contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the United States and life was hard, as we are looking at someone who died nearly 400 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 ago, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the indisputable documentary evidence is bound to be lackingeldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441151850</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Isba1789017977|title=DickensRonnie and Hilda's WomenRomance: His Towards a New Life and Lovesafter World War II|author=Wendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=The subject of Ronnie Williams was the several women in the life son of Charles Dickens might at first glance seem an unusual theme 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 build a biography aroundhave been born in 1863, but this fairly brief but penetrating book serves its purpose he was already many years older than Ethel and he might wellhave shaved a few years off his age. The author’s foreword begins by telling us that Dickens was For a man who 'craved a love so unconditional that while, the yearning family was unlikely quite well-to be satisfied -do but disaster struck in this world, a man in thrall the 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a vision of a womanhood so idealized that it very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was incompatible his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with everyday domesticity'him throughout his life. He joined the army at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441107207</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bruce DuffyPatti Smith|title=Disaster was my God|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The life of Arthur Rimbaud must be one of the most outrageous in literary history, more scandalous than Wilde, more self-destructive than Malcolm Lowery, Rimbaud was the boy poet and iconoclast who took on the literary establishment at end Year of the nineteenth century and won. So Duffy's fictional account, based closely around the actual facts of Rimbaud's life, was bound to be an exciting and furious, and he doesn't disappoint. This is a difficult book to put down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685273</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Paul Oppenheimer|title=Machiavelli: A Life Beyond Ideology Monkey
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=MachiavelliOn the coast of Santa Cruz, 'Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the first philosopher to define politics as treachery'monkey - one packed with mischief, has probably been better known as an adjectivesorrow, Machiavellian being and unexpected moments. In a synonym for duplicity in statecraftstranger's words, than as a historical person. Interestingly''Anything is possible: after all, it's the term year of the monkey'Machiavel' became common . As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in English usage as an adjective solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and noun around 1570ageing are faced head-on, although none of his works were translated into as it the language for another seventy years or so after thatshifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847252214</amazonuk>1526614758
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roger Hutchinson1912242052|title=The Silent WeaverO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=43|genre=BiographyArt|summary=There is no question but that ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the story of Angus has all first person to walk the right ingredients mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a fascinating study. Taken from his Scottish Lowlands agricultural early childhood to the isolation of a Hebridean island of South Uistminer, quarryman, joining the last ever shepherd or pack-horse platoon in the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World Wardriver, then mental breakdown but because he wanted to for pleasure and effective incarceration for almost all the rest of his life, he created some of the most unusual works of folk art that have existed this centuryadventure. And Hutchison tackles every angle of this rich narrative His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, exploring the military thinking behind how horse regiments were to combat Hitlerand its literary consequences, through to changed our view of the operations of mental health care in later twentieth century Scotland, and all points in betweenworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841589713</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harry ThompsonGraff_Find|title=Tintin: Herge and His CreationFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff
|rating=3.5
|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=I love Tintin. I love his quiff and When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of handwritten notes from his innocencejournal, his plus-fours and his foreign adventureshe didn't take much notice of it. At the age of 24, I love Snowy Graff didn't realise the dog and most gravity of all I love Captain Haddock and the flamboyance of his blistering barnacles language. So I pages he was thrilled to see a biography of the character and Hergé, his creator, and I picked it up with enthusiasmholding. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546726</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephen Games1789016304|title=Pevsner: The Early LifeWar and Love: Germany A family's testament of anguish, endurance and Artdevotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin|rating=45
|genre=Biography
|summary=Nikolai Pewsner – the minor changes of name came as a young adult - Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was born entranced by what she discovered, particularly in Saxony ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her own family's stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and 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 1902 into a Russian-Jewish familycountry with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Just too young Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to avoid having to take part escalate in the warway that it did, he had studied art history at no less than four universities by but initial protests melted away as the age of 22organisers became more circumspect. He then became It's an assistant keeper at the Dresden Gemaldegalerie, and four years later he was appointed lecturer at Gottingen Universityatrocity on a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441190937</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nancy Mitford1786893452|title=The Sun King|rating=4|genre=History|summary=Nancy Mitford assumes that you'll need no introduction to Louis XIV, who ascended the throne when he was four years old and reigned for well over seventy two years. To put him in context his reign began before Charles I was executed in Whitehall, lasted through the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, the reigns of Charles I, James II, William III and into the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne. He bridged the gap between the middle ages and the early modern era.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528886</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewUngrateful Refugee|author=Matthew Kelly|title=Finding Poland|rating=5|genre=History|summary=Looking at any historical map of Poland anyone may see how its borders have changed over the centuries. Where will you find the Polish home? One answer must be that it is founded deep in the hearts of the Polish people who fought for the liberty and the integrity of the Polish homeland. Now consider the promontory of land around Vilnius, or Wilno as it was then known, which was contained inside Poland in 1921. It was an area in which the small market town of Hruzdowa, comprising some 52 buildings and just large enough to warrant a town hall, was situated. These wild borderlands – known as the Kresy - were fought over for centuries by Austrians, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. It was here that Matthew Kelly's great-grandfather, who had imbibed the values and élan of the dashing officer class, Rafal Ryzewscy, came to teach with his clever young wife, Hanna. They were deeply committed to progress through education and to peaceably raising their two little daughters. However, the dreadful and calamitous year of 1939, was approaching when Hitler and Stalin partitioned Poland in the most cynical pact.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099515997</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Cita Stelzer|title=Dinner with Churchill: The Prime Minister's Tabletop DiplomacyDina Nayeri
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The great-grandson 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 a crofterthose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and son-in-law of a Dukealmost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, Harold Macmillan was born outsiders to the world and the situations that refugees find themselves in London in 1894. Despite It's rare that we find out the journeys from the well-refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to-do aristocratic backgroundthat, his years as a young adult were marked by bad experiences in the trenches which left him with lifelong war woundsthis intelligent, powerful and his early service as a Conservative Member of Parliament moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the plight middle of the unemployed in his first constituency of Stockton. He had much a revolution in common with another future Prime MinisterIran, Winston Churchill; both had American mothers, and both were mavericks who were elected fleeing to America as Conservatives but refused to toe the party line too steadfastlya ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844135411</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Ross0857058320|title=Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy LegendLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Some years ago, I was given ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a Penguin edition of Wildejourney to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle'The Picture of Dorian Grays death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas'great uncle, with what looked like an uniquely fearsome face is the figure who looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the front cover. A year or two later, I saw a photograph centre of Marty Feldman and was convinced he must have inspired this book is whether it if not actually been is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the modelwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857683780</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bettany Hughes1788037812|title=The Hemlock CupFraternity of the Estranged: SocratesThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, Athens and the Search for the Good Life1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=We don't know much about Socrates. For someone whose ideas are still so relevant so long after his deathOriginally passed in 1885, his life is something of the law that had made homosexual relations a mysterycrime remained in place for 82 years. He didn't like to write things downBut during this time, and so Hughes begins this book by saying that it may have something of a 'Socratesrestrictions on same-sized hole' in itsex relationships did not go unchallenged. What we do see is Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the city nature of Athenshomosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, and as well as the hugely important changes which were going on there while Socrates was aliveheterosexual Havelock Ellis. In Athens we see Exploring the beginnings margins of democracysociety and studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the UK, so the seedlings of some publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the ideas that we take for granted today, such as freedom scientific understanding of speechhomosexuality, and beginning the right struggle for recognition and equality, leading to a fair trial. This was an important time in the development milestone legalisation of modern values, and Socrates was an important man. He was not only a brilliant thinker, he was also a man that didn't quite fit, infuriating to converse with, yet fascinating to be aroundsame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554054</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stacy SchiffBuckland_Zoo|title=CleopatraThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: A LifeFrank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Stacey Schiff's biography starts more of less from Cleopatra's infamous meeting with Caesar, where she sneaks into his rooms in As a sack. This is one of the most popular images of Cleopatra conservationist in Victorian England before the public consciousness and Schiff happily refutes the image of her emerging as a well polished seductressterm existed, pointing out that anyone who had been carried in a sack for Frank Buckland was very much a considerable period man ahead of his time will more likely be fairly dishevelled. Schiff takes us through from this moment Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and eccentric sums him up to Cleopatra's much dramatised deathperfectly, and beyond, any biographer is immediately presented with a colourful tale to the end of the Ptolemaic dynastytell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>075353956X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tina BrownWilliams_Captain|title=The Diana ChroniclesCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: His Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams|rating=54
|genre=Biography
|summary=''The Diana Chronicles'' In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was first published in 2007command of the troops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, ten years after Diana's untimely death (forgive me if I proffer information that you already know, but prior Australia: his wife and young son accompanied him. He was not destined to reading this booklive a long life, I was one of dying suddenly at the small group age of people in this country happily oblivious 34 at Bangalore, leaving his widow to the Princess Diana industry)raise their two young sons. The book has been re-released Edwards' death left his widow in shocking pink, white and gold livery, as a 'commemorative edition' difficult position: not only did she have their farm to coincide with The Royal Weddingmanage, but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the land. A fanciful Foreword now imagines Diana's life and reaction to Will and Kate's marriage, had Two years later she survivedwould marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099568357</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances WilsonPeacock_mountain|title=How to Survive the Titanic or the Sinking Into The Mountain, A Life of J. Bruce IsmayNan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=As Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I read 'How to Survive can understand the Titanic' approach, but I was conscious that also think we're only a matter of months away from the centenary of the sinking – sell ourselves short by it, and a slew of media to mark we sell the occasionmyriad lesser-known authors short as well. Given that the subject has been mined extensively over the years it will be interesting to see whether there's anything new to be said about the tragedy. It's a subject which has always fascinated me – and it was with a sense of anticipation that So while, like most other people I opened the book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809222</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew Crowther|title=Gilbert of Gilbert have my favourite genres, and Sullivan: His Life favoured authors, and Character|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Gilbert and Sullivan were while, like most other people I read the Rice reviews and Lloyd Webber of the late Victorian era. Some might regard their work as slightly dated these daysfollow up on what appeals, especially the satirical lyrics which were so much I also have a product of their time, but their appeal has never really faded and it surely never willthird-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752455893</amazonuk>
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