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[[Category:Biography|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]==Biography==__NOTOC__<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Fisher1788360702|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!'Charles, The Alternative Prince: A Life in Jokes and PicturesAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=I grew up watching Tommy CooperFor over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and watching my dad do impressions of Tommy Coopercomplementary therapies. I thought he was hilarious (''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the real Tommy!) Prince's opinions, beliefs and loved aims against the background of the scientific evidence. There are few instances of his expressions as he repeatedly tried beliefs being vindicated and failed his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to do magic tricks! This book the reputation of a man who is rather unusual as although it is a biography proud of sortshis refusal to apply evidence-based, giving information about Tommy's life and logical reasoning to his history in the world of entertainment, it isn't text heavy, and so mostly Tommy's story is told through photographs and picturesambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Unwin (editor)1739805100|title=Newcomers' LivesLoving the Enemy: The Story of Immigrants as Told in Obituaries from The Times|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=I think I was not the only person who at first glance found the title and sub-title slightly misleading. For me it conjured up visions of those who came across on the ‘Windrush’ Building bridges in 1948 and the life they led on settling in Britain – and, perhaps, the lives a time of the more famous (assuming there were some) in obituary form.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441159177</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewwar|author=Artemis Cooper|title=Patrick Leigh Fermor: An AdventureAndrew March
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The sub-title ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of this biography is highly appropriateauthor Andrew March's grandparents, for who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the ninety-six years early days of Patrick Leigh Fermor were packed with adventurethe Nazi regime in the 1930s. Born in 1915Fred, a sensitive and thoughtful man, he was something had some vague ideas of a maverick "building bridges" which may guard against the growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at school, intellectually gifted the time. Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but perpetually naughty, he did make friendships and his punishments connections that lasted for various refractions included suspensions and even expulsionsa lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719554497</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Selina GuinnessWill Brooker|title=The Crocodile by the Door: The Story of a House, a Farm and a FamilyTruth About Lisa Jewell
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Selina Guinness lived at Tibradden 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 a child well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and in 2002 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 husbandbeing in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to-beattend), but pulled Brooker, Colin Grahama professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, moved back to down the house when her elderly uncle Charles became frailrabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. The surname might lead you Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to suspect that there were brewery millions follow her through a year in the background but this wasnpublished author't s life, working to make a success of the caselatest title, and struggling with the next in line. The couple were young academics and doing what needed to be Jewell, due diligence appropriately done at Tibradden would need to be done in addition to full-time jobs, agrees. The house was on the outskirts of Dublin - 'derelict fields' if you were a property developer or the last defence against And this is the encroaching city if you were notresult.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844881571</amazonuk>1529136024
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Harry RickettsMartha Leigh|title=Strange MeetingsInvisible Ink: The Lives of the Poets of the Great WarA Family Memoir|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The majority of recent books on the War Poets tend to focus on their lives during and immediately after the conflict. This enterprising account, borrowing its name from the poem by Wilfred Owen, takes Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a different approach childhood spent in spanning a full fifty years or moreslightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. It begins with Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the first meeting complete correspondence of Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke at one of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life's work. Marsh was Her mother is a tireless supporter concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of modern painters and after that promising new writers, particularly poetslife. The journey, or rather account of meetings, takes us to There is love in the western front and back to England, culminating in house but also darker undercurrents that a reunion of two of the longest-lived, Sassoon and David Jones, in 1964child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>1800460384
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon CallowPolly Barton|title=Charles Laughton: A Difficult ActorFifty Sounds
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Once 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 towering presence on stage while and screen, if the star of fifty films and forty playsworld hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, Charles Laughton seems largely forgotten these daysbut I am not hopeful. As an actor of a younger generation and keen admirer of his workAnd like Barton, Callow is well placed to bring him back I don't know the answer to the fore. He notes question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in his preface that the man has increasingly slipped out of public consciousnessfirst essay, and even within his own profession he which is virtually unknown to anybody under on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the age sound of forty''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099581957</amazonuk>1913097501
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John SugdenFrederic Gros|title=Nelson: A Dream Philosophy of GloryWalking
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=I will admit 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 didn't know what can turn down the pages I was letting myself in for have marked and return to its varying wisdom when I saw 'Nelson: A Dream of Glory' sitting on the Bookbag shelf, but I need to. Some books draw you in slowly. This one had just come back from Portsmouth and a wander around on me in the Victoryfirst two pages, so it was wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a bit hard to resistsport''. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845951913</amazonuk>1781688370
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate ChisholmSharon Blackie|title=Wits and Wives: Dr Johnson in the Company of If WomenRose Rooted
|rating=5
|genre=Biography|summary=What's your mental image of a Great Writer? Most people would probably I normally say the same thing: someone sitting in splendid isolation, probably in that you can tell how much a garret, writing Great Words and hating thembook means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. The idea Perhaps an even greater measure of Great Writers having friends, or even a family, impact is a bizarre setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the oneI've borrowed. Partly this is because most Great Writers were incredibly weird people. But there I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 's another issue at play. Welife-changing're simply not used to imagining them in context, just one small part of a large and busy world. Our notion of biography – although it is an incredibly fragmented one: despite definitely the fact that one of first two and only time will tell about the best indications of someonethird – but clichés exist for a reason and I's character is how they interact with other human beings, we expect biographers to essentially confine themselves to the person and their literary outputm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845951867</amazonuk>1912836017
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances A Gerard0241446732|title=Anna Amalia, Grand DuchessOur House is on Fire: Patron Scenes of Goethe a Family and Schillera Planet in Crisis|rating=4|genreauthor=Biography|summary=Anna Amalia of BrunswickMalena Ernman, a Duchess of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach in the eighteenth centuryGreta Thunberg, is scarcely little more than a footnote in European royal history these days. Nevertheless it was mainly through her patronage that the court of Weimar became one of the most artistically renowned of the time, a reputation it never lost throughout the increasingly militaristic times that Germany went through from the age of Bismarck Beata Thunberg and beyond.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781550166</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Adrian Fort|title=Nancy: The Story of Lady AstorSvante Thunberg
|rating=5
|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Nancy, Lady Astor, the first woman to take her seat as The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an elected Member opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of Parliament at Westminster, is one the parenting of those characters about whom it is surely impossible for anyone to write a dull biographytheir two daughters. A determined character who inspired admiration, respect Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and talking and exasperation in equal measure from most if not all who had dealings with hersister, Beata, then nine years old, she is well served by this latest in a long line of titles devoted to her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409016X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Julia Jones|title=Fifty Years In The Fiction Factory: The Working Life Of Herbert Allingham|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=Herbert Allingham struggled with what was one of the most prolific authors of his timehappening. Between 1886 and his death in 1936 he was In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a busy writer of melodramatic serial stories in solution close to home, but eventually, it became clear to the massfamily that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-market halfpenny papers which flourished at the turn of the centuryout planet''. Yet nothing he wrote was ever published in book form with his name If they were to find a way to it, and the magazine proprietors made fortunes while live happily again their authors were the unsung heroes of the tradesolution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1899262075</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Doggett0648684806|title=The Man Who Sold The WorldClara Colby: David Bowie And The 1970s|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=With hindsight, it’s difficult to argue with the oft-expressed opinion that David Bowie was the single most important rock musician of the 1970s. Having been a perpetual ‘one to watch’ from around 1966 onwards but with only one hit during that decade, ‘Space Oddity’, from 1972 onwards he went through several remarkable self-reinventions in musical style, with an uncanny knack of being able to pre-empt the next big trend. In examining his whole career but focusing largely on his work throughout that particular decade, Peter Doggett looks specifically at every song he recorded, including cover versions. There are also boxed-out features on each album, and articles on related topics such as ‘The Art of Minimalism’ and ‘The Heart of Plastic Soul’. He concludes that by 1979 the man’s extraordinary creativity was more or less spent and his subsequent output, successful though it may have been, was in effect treading water up to his ‘elegant, unannounced retirement’ in 2007.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548879</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewInternational Suffragist|author=Victoria Glendinning|title=Raffles And the Golden OpportunityJohn Holliday
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Although Raffles has gone down in history as The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the founder time she was just three-years-old but because of Singapore his roots were far from grandsome childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. He had no advantages apart from his own drive Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and determination and his professional life began with saw that she received a lowly clerkship with the East india Companygood education, then as large both in and ungainly as many a governmentout of school. When he went abroad on behalf of She was the Company he quickly learned only child in the merits of doing something household and asking permission afterwardsher childhood was glorious. By contrast, not least because her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the time taken United States and life was hard, as Clara was to contact London find out when she and then receive her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a replyfew months: she was married for fifteen years, had ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. Even if all went well this could take As the best part of eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was a year - by which time the original question could well be academicrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686032</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher Simon Sykes1789017977|title=HockneyRonnie and Hilda's Romance: The Biography, Volume 1, 1937-1975|rating=5|genre=Art|summary=As one of the major names of British twentieth century art, David Hockney has always been Towards a larger than life figure. Published to coincide with his 75th birthday, this is the first volume of a biography which tells his story up to 1975.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846057086</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewNew Life after World War II|author=Lois Banner|title=Marilyn: The Passion and the ParadoxWendy Williams
|rating=4
|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=With Ronnie Williams was the possible exception son of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe is probably the most written-about deceased woman in twentieth-century historyThomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. The thirty-six years of her life and the manner of her death will no There's some doubt continue as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to provide an opportunity for as have been born in 1863, but he was already many writers as they years older than Ethel and he might well have since her sudden passingshaved a few years off his age. After For a decade of research Lois Bannerwhile, a Professor of History the family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the 1929 Depression and Gender Studies at university in California, has added another weighty tome five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to the relevant shelvesa very different lifestyle. As a selfOne thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-styled pioneer of secondturned-wave feminism out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the new women’s history, she has some interesting insights to offer into her subject’s life as a gender role modelarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408814102</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Penny JunorPatti Smith|title=Prince William: Born to be King: An Intimate PortraitYear of the Monkey
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Prince William is one On the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the few people who genuinely needs no introductionmonkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. HeIn a stranger's been in the public eye since his birth and the interest is certain to increase rather than diminish as time goes by. On the other hand he words, ''Anything ispossible: after all, it's the year of the monkey'' only thirty. Is there really going to be enough to warrant a book and will it be anything more than an attempt to cash As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on his marriage a year that brings huge shifts in 2011 her life - loss and the current interest in all things royal engendered by the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? You can see that I was something of a reluctant reader ageing are faced head- my sympathies are republican rather than royalist and in addition Penny Junor is known to be a supporter of Prince Charles in what can be described on, as it the War of the Walesesshifting political waters in America. Was this ''really'' going to be a book which I would enjoy?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444720392</amazonuk>1526614758
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley Harrison1912242052|title=Sylvia Pankhurst: The Rebellious SuffragetteO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=To some extent, ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the history of first person to walk the suffragettes was also the history of the Pankhurst family. Sylviamountains alone, born in 1882not because he had to for work, was the second daughter of Dr Richard and Emmeline Pankhurstas a miner, and one of three sisters. The family had always been heavily politicisedquarryman, Richard being a founder member of the Fabian Society alongside George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wellsshepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and the children had quite an austere upbringingadventure. When His rapturous encounters with their father’s health took a sudden turn for the worse in 1898natural beauty, Emmeline and eldest daughter Christabel were abroad on business and Sylvia was left in charge of her younger siblings as well as having to nurse himits literary consequences, taking the full force changed our view of the shock when he died in her armsworld''. With his passing the family were left strangely detached from each other. His widow became heavily involved in public work and political agitation, an increasingly remote mother from the young children who needed her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780950187</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tracy BormanGraff_Find|title=Matilda: Wife of the Conqueror, first Queen of EnglandFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=Writing the biography of any woman who lived as long ago as the eleventh century, even someone as illustrious as a Queen, is a pretty thankless task. There will always be huge gaps in the knowledge available. For example we do not know when Matilda was born, and likewise we do not have When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a precise date for her marriage, although we do know when she died. No lifelike images plastic folder of her are knownhandwritten notes from his journal, though evidence suggests that she was quite short he didn't take much notice of statureit. In a male-dominated society, there are approximate records At the age of when her sons were born24, but not her daughters. Even more confusingly perhaps, many Graff didn't realise the gravity of the stories passed down to us throughout history are quite probably falsepages he was holding. It is hardly surprising that this appears to be the first full-length life of her yet to appear in English.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549131</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Rosen1789016304|title=Fantastic Mr DahlWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=Children's Non-FictionBiography|summary=Reading this book is rather like curling up in a deep, squishy armchair with a cup of cocoa and some squashed-fly biscuits while a favourite uncle chats Melanie Martin read about what happened to you about books. He tells you interesting things about Roald Dahl's life, and then he discusses how those events may have affected his writing, secure Dutch Jews in the knowledge that you already know occupied Amsterdam during World War II and love the stories. Just as importantwas entranced by what she discovered, he pauses particularly in his chat from time to time to ask your opinion — and it's clear he's really interested in your answer. Do you prefer the original version The Diary of Ann Frank''but then realised that her own family'James s stories were equally fascinating. A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the Giant Peach''war years, or the one which was eventually published? Can you imagine but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how funny it would this could be allowed to see your grandfather looking happen in through your bedroom window, like a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the BFG?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141322136</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Leo McKinstry|title=Jack Hobbsoccupation could never happen: England's Greatest Cricketer|rating=5|genre=Sport|summary=Back in even those who thought that the Germans might reach the early 1920s, there city were only three Test cricket playing nations; Englandconvinced that they would soon be pushed back, Australia and South Africa. In that the summer of 2012, both nations have been on tour; Australia recently beaten comprehensively at one day cricket and South Africa about to start a test series Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to determine the best Test nation escalate in the world. Given way that history is repeating itself, it seems appropriate that a new biography of Jack Hobbsdid, Englandbut initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It's greatest run scorer and an atrocity on a man who repeatedly blunted the bowling attacks vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of both nations, should become available nowindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224083309</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert K Massie1786893452|title=Catherine the Great: Portrait of a WomanThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Already known for major biographies 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 Nicholas and Alexandrathose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and of Peter the Greatalmost always, Massie has now written an equally full and absorbing life of no matter how deep the late eighteenth-century reigning Empress.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0679456724</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tim Ewart|title=The Treasures of Queen Elizabeth|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=Tim Ewart is Royal Correspondent for ITV Newsinvestigative journalism they carry out, which must be one of outsiders to the perfect starting points for writing a biography of world and the Queen as she celebrates her diamond jubileesituations that refugees find themselves in. SheIt's only rare that we find out the journeys from the second British monarch refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to achieve do that, in this landmark intelligent, powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri - the other being Queen Victoria. After sixty years on the throne - and eighty six someone who was born in public life - there's not much which isn't known about the Queen and few pictures which haven't previously seen the light middle of daya revolution in Iran, but Ewart's book is marked out by the inclusion of memorabilia which will have fleeing to America as a freshness for many readersten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780970064</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennie Bond0857058320|title=Elizabeth: A Diamond Jubilee PortraitLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Jennie Bond was ''Lord Of All the BBCDead'' is a journey to uncover the author's Royal Correspondent lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for fourteen years from 1989 and covered a period of particular turbulence the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Royal familySpanish Civil War. It might not have been unprecedented but it was Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the first time that what was happening was so widely reported throughout figure who looms large over the world. This book covers a much wider period with the emphasis being on pictures rather than words. ItHe died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's a heavy, well-produced and lavishly-presented book of forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the type which would make a good present or souvenir centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a visit to hero whilst having fought for the United Kingdomwrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847329608</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christina Schmid1788037812|title=Always By My Side: Losing the love The Fraternity of my life and the fight to honour his memoryEstranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson|rating=2.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=On Halloween 2009 bomb disposal expert Olaf (Oz) Schmid became another mortality statistic from Originally passed in 1885, the conflict law that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in Afghanistanplace for 82 years. Many people enjoy magazines like ''Hello'' who will absorb the stories of Oz's early yearsBut during this time, how he met Christinarestrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the family holidays, stories about both sets nature of parents etchomosexuality appeared. But for meThey were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, this is like looking at someone else's personal photo album; even if you have a connection with as well as the album's owner, after a while it becomes boring and lacks meaningheterosexual Havelock Ellis. Although I wouldn't have had half Exploring the inner strength margins of society and courage that Christina showed after studying homosexuality was common on the European Continent, but barely talked about in the death of a soul mateUK, so the emphasis publications of ''Always By My Side'' is out these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of kilterhomosexuality, and beginning the descriptions of life in Afghanistan struggle for recognition and equality, leading to the subsequent campaign being almost lost milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in the family detail1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184605947X</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Penelope Hughes-HallettBuckland_Zoo|title=The Immortal DinnerMan Who Ate the Zoo: A famous evening Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of genius and laughter in literary London, 1817natural history|author=Richard Girling
|rating=4.5
|genre=History
|summary=A book based around just one dinner sounds a little extraordinary. But the host, painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, was no ordinary artist. He was a friend of many of the major artistic and literary figures of the day, in addition to being an ambitious painter of historical scenes. Sadly, his ambition was not matched by popularity or good fortune, and despite or perhaps parly because an exaggerated belief in his own abilities, one and a half centuries after his death he is largely forgotten except for his suicide after years of despair, and perhaps his diary as well.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956372X</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Sara Turing
|title=Alan M Turing: Centenary Edition
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=June 2012 will see the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, brilliant mathematician, the man who played a major part in breaking the Enigma codes in the Second World War and is widely thought to be the father of computer science. To celebrate the anniversary Cambridge University Press have reprinted a short biography written by Turing's mother and included a memoir written by his older brother, John. I'm rarely impressed by biographies written by [[No Ordinary Man by Dominic Carman|family members]] particularly when they're still coming to terms with their own grief, but this book is startling for what it says about the family members as much as for what it says about Alan Turing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1107020581</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Sally E Svenson
|title=Lily, Duchess of Marlborough (1854 - 1909): A Portrait with Husbands
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=The woman we will eventually come to know as Lily, Duchess of Marlborough was born Eliza Warren Price As a conservationist in TroyVictorian England before the term existed, New York in 1854. Her father hailed from Bluegrass Country in Kentucky and met his future wife (who Frank Buckland was from Troy) in Washington DC. The family was comfortably off (but not rich) and became part very much a man ahead of the Troy's social elite when they returned to live therehis time. Lily (as she became known) had an unremarkable childhood Surgeon, naturalist, veterinarian and youth but became wealthy though her marriage to Louis Hammersleyeccentric sums him up perfectly, who died when she was twenty eight and left her any biographer is immediately presented with a wealthy widow. His will would leave her legal problems which would simmer all her life and even after her own death twenty one years and two more husbands latercolourful tale to tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1457507765</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane BrownWilliams_Captain|title=Lancelot 'Capability' BrownCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: The Omnipotent Magician 1716-1783His Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Among those who helped their contemporaries living through In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the Age 17th Regiment of Enlightenment to see the world around them Foot. He was in a different light, Brown was unquestionably one command of the most influential. Having trained as troops and convicts on board a gardenership sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, as a Australia: his wife and young man he acquired an exhaustive knowledge of plants and trees, as well as of drainage and water managementson accompanied him. To this He was added not destined to live a rare ability to look long life, dying suddenly at the dullest age of gardens and landscapes34 at Bangalore, decide that they had 'capabilitiesleaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards' death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but she was also responsible for improvement (hence the time-honoured epithet), and persuade convicts who worked the owner that a transformation was both possible and desirableland. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951794</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Johanna AdorjanPeacock_mountain|title=An Exclusive LoveInto The Mountain, A Life of Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=This moving memoir tells of Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the double suicide of both István (a Hungarian-Jewish form of Stephen) and his wife Vera one Sunday morning in October. The story is told by their granddaughterapproach, Joanna Adorján and tells of her close fondness for them both but in particular with VeraI also think we sell ourselves short by it, with whom the author shares many characteristics. The story begins with the systematic persecution of such Hungarian Jews in Budapest under the Nazi occupation and describes their perilous flight to Denmark after we sell the Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956myriad lesser-known authors short as well. It ends with the police reports of the duty officer dated 15.10.91 with the discovery of their bodies in their bungalow in the CharlottenlundSo while, like most other people I have my favourite genres, a town of the Capital Region of Denmark. Entry is gained by a local locksmith who charged 297.02 kroner. It is the charm and lyricism with which this tale is related which makes this fatefulfavoured authors, haunting and profoundly moving story about identity both sad while, like most other people I read the reviews and memorablefollow up on what appeals, I also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552671</amazonuk>
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{{newreview|author=Karen Blumenthal|title=Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Framed by Jobs' iconic speech at a Stanford College graduation ceremony, and the three stories he told the students, about connecting the dots, love and loss, and mortality, this biography gives a succinct and balanced account of Jobs' life, his successes and his failures, his passions and his ideals, and his infamously polarized personality. The author actively annotates the backstory of Jobs with references from this speech, as well as future events, carefully chosen statistics, and Jobs' own reminiscence, giving a rich context to his story. Jobs' achievements are incredible and they're not simply down Move on to his genius, but his attitudes towards life and his incredible charisma. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408832062</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot|title=Dotter of Her Father's Eyes|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=If there's one person able to produce a worthwhile potted history of James Joyce's daughter, it should be Mary M Talbot. She's an eminent academic, and her father was a major Joycean scholar. Both females had parents with the same names too - James and Nora, both took to the stage when younger after going to dance school, but it's the contrasts between them this volume subtly picks out rather than any similarities, in a dual biography painted by one person we know by now as more than able to produce a delightful graphic novel - [[:Category:Bryan Talbot|Bryan TalbotNewest Business and Finance Reviews]].|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096087</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michael Holroyd|title=A Book of Secrets, Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Picture the crowded atelier of the renowned sculptor, Rodin or perhaps the dimly lit corridors of Lord Grimthorpe's mansion. Perhaps you might prefer to frequent the brightly lit splendour of the balconies of the coastal villa at Cimbrone above the magnificent Gulf of Salerno. The inhabitants of such places led their tangled lives, sometimes enduring painful losses or by contrast, energetically inspired to passionate love affairs. In these stimulating environments we catch glimpses of the famous, like E.M.Forster, Virginia Woolf, sometimes accompanied by her close confidante, Vita Sackville West and then there was that tempestuous iconoclast, D.H.Lawrence. Many such lives were inspired by both landscape and lust, fashioned by each other's creative energies and endowed with artistic talents of all kinds. Here we learn of talents and beauty that inspires artistic endeavour, like the many charms of Eve Fairfax. She, who after brief affairs was gradually forced into a stoic suspension which she recorded with thoughts from her friends in the pages of annotated diaries which became ''A Book of Secrets''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548941</amazonuk>}}