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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household1788360702|author=Kate Hubbard|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summarytitle=Biographies old and new of Queen VictoriaCharles, her husband and her children are plentiful enough. The vast majority of them are based to some extent on the diaries, memoirs and biographies of some of the most important figures who served her, and Kate Hubbard has put these as well as supplementary archive papers to good use in presenting a thoroughly engrossing account of the royal household throughout the Queen’s lengthy reign. I might almost say ‘lively’, though that could be an exaggeration. The court of Victoria may have been homely after a fashion, but for the most part it was hardly lively.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532239</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Sellers|title=What Fresh Lunacy is This?Alternative Prince: The Authorised Biography of Oliver Reed|rating=5|genre=An Unauthorised Biography|summary=For rather more of his career than he, his family and closest friends might have liked, the name Oliver Reed was a byword for booze, brawls and all types of laddish behaviour. As Sellers’ very full and remarkably objective biography reveals, it was a funny yet sad life all at once. For although he repeatedly played up to the image of the lovable rogue which he had created, underneath the bad boy of popular legend he was at heart a professional actor who could always deliver a first-rate performance on the film set when required.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147210112X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Neal Thompson|title=A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not' Ripley Edzard Ernst

|summary=Robert LeRoy Ripley was indeed a curious man. He throve on curiosityFor over forty years, his own Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and that of everyone elsecomplementary therapies. By exploiting and never underestimating ''Charles, The Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the public demand for triviaPrince's opinions, beliefs and by being in aims against the right place at background of the right time just as the news scientific evidence. There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and broadcasting media were beginning his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to develop in America into the unassailable forces they were by the end reputation of a man who is proud of the centuryhis refusal to apply evidence-based, he became one of the most successful men of the agelogical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947204</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hermione Lee1739805100|title=Edith Wharton|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=A prolific author, Edith Wharton's published output included over twenty novels, one a Pulitzer Prize winner, and 85 short stories, as well as poetry and books on interior design and travel. Born in Loving the United States Enemy: Building bridges in 1862, she travelled extensively throughout Europe, and settled permanently in France where she died in 1937.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845952014</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewa time of war|author=Sylvie Simmons|title=I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard CohenAndrew March

|summary=If you or I wanted to write a ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story about an imaginary figure of author Andrew March's grandparents, who began as a novelist and poet, then became acclaimed as a singer-songwriter first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the early days of the Nazi regime in the swinging sixties, made and lost a fortune1930s. Fred, became a monk, sensitive and returned to a musical career at an age when most mortals are well into retirementthoughtful man, and found himself not only more popular than ever but also playing to had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the largest audiences growing hostilities between nations unfolding in his entire life, it would be dismissed as total fantasyEurope at the time. Nobody could Fred's attempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make it up – friendships and nobody needs to, because in connections that lasted for a nutshell that is the life (so far) of Leonard Cohen, the subject of this biography and surely one of the music business’s most unique figureslifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549328</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=J C KannemeyerWill Brooker|title=J.M. Coetzee: A life in writingThe Truth About Lisa Jewell|rating=4.5

|summary=JMeet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the most successful British authors I've never knowingly read.M Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. (John Maxwell) Coetzee is described This book starts with the two meeting each other, as probably well, and shows how 2021 drew the most celebrated two closer and decorated writer throughout the English-speaking worldcloser together. The author meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of sixteen published novelsher anecdote about cup cakes, he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature words of her latest book she was reciting, and her being in a ''black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, a professor of cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the Booker Prize twicerabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. At Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a year in the same time he has guarded his privacy jealouslypublished author's life, tending working to decline interviews and requests to discuss his workmake a success of the latest title, and refusing to collect prestigious awards struggling with the next in personline. On one occasion he explained his absence by saying that he could not imagine 'anything better calculated to reduce me to misery'Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. One acquaintance claims to have attended several dinner parties at which And this is the author was a fellow guest and did not utter a single wordresult.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1922070084</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Vladimir AlexandrovMartha Leigh|title=The Black RussianInvisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Until I read this Martha Leigh begins her book I had never come across talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the story complete correspondence of Frederick Bruce Thomasthe philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his life'the Black Russian', befores work. It Her mother is a remarkable tale concert pianist who practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the practicalities of rags to riches, tragedy, success against life. There is love in the odds and subsequent failurehouse but also darker undercurrents that a child does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781855196</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lucy MoorePolly Barton|title=NijinskyFifty Sounds

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=The name Nijinsky is synonymous Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with dance from the last days of imperial Russiaquestion ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I must confess to knowing little about him until may get there later this year, but I read thisam not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first biography essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of him for nearly forty years, and for me it was a surprise ''every party where you have to learn that his career was so tragically briefintroduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846686180</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diana SouhamiFrederic Gros|title=The Trials A Philosophy of Radclyffe HallWalking|rating=45|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=It is a coincidence that I confess I picked this one up from the year 1928 saw the first appearance library in my pre-lockdown forage of two English novels which were denounced and initially suppressed on random stuff. Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the grounds of obscenity pages I have marked and their potential return to its varying wisdom when I need to corrupt innocent readers – D.H Some books draw you in slowly. Lawrence’s This one had me in the first two pages, wherein Gros explains why 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' and Radclyffe Hallwalking is not a sport's 'The Well of Loneliness'. Lawrence's many novels, stories and poems are widely read today, but Hall and her works are hardly remembered except by a minority. Diana Souhami has done her a service in this generous yet deeply probing life of a literary trailblazer.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780878788</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diana SouhamiSharon Blackie|title=Greta and CecilIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=45|genre=Biography|summary=The story of the notoriously reclusive film star from Sweden and the noted British photographer is I normally say that you can tell how much a curious onebook means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Neither ever married, both were androgynous and bisexual, plucked their eyebrows, and had numerous short-term relationships. They were like chalk and cheese; Beaton was a compulsive writer and diarist, while Garbo was reluctant to pick up a pen Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to sign her buy my own namecopy before I've finished reading the one I've borrowed. He adored parties, publicity, dressing up in frocks and photographing himself or posing for others behind the lens (he couldn’t look more feminine in two pictures of him in frocks by Dorothy Wilding from 1925 if he tried), while she was very much an early bed at night person, preferred I want to wear unfussy men’s clothes, and was reluctant to be photographed at all if she could help avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life-changing' – although it. It is significant that definitely the one picture of them together in first two and only time will tell about the book, taken in London in 1951, shows her deliberately hiding her face behind what looks like third – but clichés exist for a handbagreason and I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780878869</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami0241446732|title=Natalie and Romaine|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=The main focus of the book Our House is the relationship between Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks, two very well-off American lesbians who first met in Paris when the former was 39 and the latter 41. It was the beginning of an often mercurial partnership which lasted for fifty years. However, despite the author’s insistence, it is less a double biography than a survey of the Sapphic society life which centred on Paris for much Fire: Scenes of this period. Barney, a poet, was a flamboyant character who used to say that 'living was the first of all the arts' Family and often vowed to make 'my life itself into a poem'. Brooks, a painter whose self-portrait adorns the front cover, was the product of a difficult childhood, abused by her mother who far preferred her mentally unbalanced brother, often proclaimed sadly that 'my dead mother stands between me and life'. An aloof soul, she made a brief marriage with the homosexual John Ellingham Brooks but left him within a year.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878826</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPlanet in Crisis|author=Thomas Wright|title=Circulation: William Harvey's Revolutionary IdeaMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg

|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary='Circulation' by Thomas Wright is a biography of English physician William Harvey’s life, and the story of the 'birth of a theory'. It takes the reader through time before, during and after the creation and completion of ''De Motu Cordis'', in which Harvey famously outlines the most comprehensive antecedent of the mechanism of blood circulation as we know it today. The combination of the writer's aptitude for storytelling and the intriguing life of the individual about whom he writes makes for a fascinating read, allowing one to course through chronologically arranged chapters on Harvey’s life and works, mixed with briefer essays on subject matters ranging from the history of vivisection to the philosophical underpinnings of Harvey’s work.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552698<Ernman /amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Morrison|title=The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev|rating=4Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal.5|genre=Biography|summary=This book is a biography of Malena Ernman was an opera singer and based largely Svante Thunberg took on the letters of Lina Prokofiev. Born Carlina Codina in Madrid in 1897, she spent most of her childhood in New York. After making her stage debut as a soprano in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’ under the name parenting of Lina Llubera, she met the Soviet composer and pianist Serge Prokofiev, best remembered for the children’s musical fable ‘Peter and the Wolf’their two daughters. They married in 1924 Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and for the first thirteen years of their marriage they lived in Paris, where two sons, Oleg talking and Svyatoslav, were born to them. Soon after moving to Moscow in 1936 their marriage fell apart. In 1941 he left her for a writersister, Mira MendelsonBeata, 24 then nine years his juniorold, whom he married six years later.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557313</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev|title=Giants: The Dwarfs of Auschwitz: The Extraordinary Story of the Lilliput Troupe|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The title of this book does of course carry a sense of irony, although we never quite know exactly how much. When a man of diminutive stature was born in rural Romania in the 1860s nobody was to know struggled with what would happen to his lineage – there was no clue then that he would father ten children, and seven of them would inherit his genetic dwarfismhappening. But history has pieced together all that followed In such circumstances, including the careers those children had as it's natural to seek a performance troupe, belting out showtunes solution close to their own accompanimenthome, and acting in their own tragi-comic skits. And then having the limelight stolen from them by the Nazisbut eventually, and a transportation it became clear to Auschwitz. And then being surprisingly saved, and given what passed as a cushty life, fed and together, but tortured at the hands of the camp doctor, avidly researching anything he thought might shed clues family that they were ''burned-out people on what singled a burned-out his Aryan raceplanet''s genetic destiny. I say the amount of irony is unknown because we are not told exactly how short these little characters are – but he, the doctor, If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would have knownneed to be radical. As one of the more ominous sentences you'll read all year has it – 'Mengele had plans for them'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849544646</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd0648684806|title=Wilkie CollinsClara Colby: The International Suffragist|author=John Holliday

|summary=While Peter Ackroyd has published some extremely long books over The path of Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the last few time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, he has also been responsible for some commendably concise volumes as wellshe wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and three brothers. This life Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a good education, both in and out of school. She was the Victorian novelist is one only child in the household and her childhood was glorious. By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-west of the latterUnited States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the latest in his series of 'Brief Lives'family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, which have also included Chaucerhad ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the painter Turner eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and [[Poe by Peter Ackroyd|Edgar Allan Poe]]Wisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287471</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gary Raymond1789017977|title=3-Minute JRR TolkienRonnie and Hilda's Romance: A Visual Biography of The Towards a New Life after World's Most Revered Fantasy WriterWar II|author=Wendy Williams

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=When something with such a built-in cult base Ronnie Williams was the son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Tolkien books have gets transported into another medium, the manically interested fans have two reactions – to initially scoff at how nothing could compare with the original, Harry) and then Ethel Wall. There's some doubt as to try and buy everything worthwhile with whether or not they were ever married or even a tenuous link Harry's birthdate: he claimed to the object of their affectionshave been born in 1863, while avoiding the mountain of crud that could deluge the unwarybut he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his age. Such it will be until the third movie part of ''The Hobbit'' is safely behind usFor a while, and the sixfamily was quite well-film, three-month long Bluto-Ray box set is on the shelves. Tolkien enthusiasts of course have a precarious situation – so great do they rightly hold but disaster struck in the originals, 1929 Depression and so low can the quality of the spinfive-year-offs be, there are some who will never be satisfiedold Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. But there remains the newcomer, freshly inspired One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to find be well-turned-out more, and those this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the army at least will certainly be able to enjoy this beginner's guide to [[:Category:J R R Tolkien|J R R Tolkien]]eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908005831</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John FisherPatti Smith|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!': A Life in Jokes and PicturesYear of the Monkey

|summary=I grew up watching Tommy CooperOn the coast of Santa Cruz, and watching my dad do impressions Patti Smith enters the lunar year of Tommy Cooper. I thought he was hilarious (the real Tommy!) monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and loved his expressions as he repeatedly tried and failed to do magic tricks! This book unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, ''Anything is rather unusual as although possible: after all, it is a biography of sorts, giving information about Tommy's life and his history in the world year of entertainment, it isnthe monkey''t text heavy. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and so mostly Tommy's story is told through photographs and picturesageing are faced head-on, as it the shifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Unwin (editor)1912242052|title=Newcomers' Lives: The Story of Immigrants as Told in Obituaries from The TimesO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=I think I was not ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the only first person who at first glance found to walk the title mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and sub-title slightly misleadingadventure. For me it conjured up visions of those who came across on the ‘Windrush’ in 1948 and the life they led on settling in Britain – His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, andits literary consequences, perhaps, the lives changed our view of the more famous (assuming there were some) in obituary formworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441159177</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Artemis CooperGraff_Find|title=Patrick Leigh Fermor: An AdventureFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=The sub-title When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of this biography is highly appropriatehandwritten notes from his journal, for he didn't take much notice of it. At the ninety-six years age of Patrick Leigh Fermor were packed with adventure. Born in 191524, Graff didn't realise the gravity of the pages he was something of a maverick at school, intellectually gifted but perpetually naughty, and his punishments for various refractions included suspensions and even expulsionsholding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719554497</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Selina Guinness1789016304|title=The Crocodile by the DoorWar and Love: The Story A family's testament of a Houseanguish, a Farm endurance and a Familydevotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary=Selina Guinness lived at Tibradden as a child Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and in 2002 was entranced by what she and her husband-to-bediscovered, Colin Graham, moved back to the house when particularly in ''The Diary of Ann Frank'' but then realised that her elderly uncle Charles became frailown family's stories were equally fascinating. The surname might lead you to suspect that there A hundred and seven thousand Jews were brewery millions in deported from the city during the background war years, but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this wasn't the casecould be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. The couple Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the Germans might reach the city were young academics and doing what needed to convinced that they would soon be done at Tibradden pushed back, that the Amsterdammers would need never allow what happened to be done escalate in addition to full-time jobsthe way that it did, but initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. The house was It's an atrocity on the outskirts a vast scale but made up of tens of thousands of Dublin - 'derelict fields' if you were a property developer or the last defence against the encroaching city if you were notindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844881571</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Harry Ricketts1786893452|title=Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great WarUngrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=The majority of recent books on Here in the War Poets tend to focus West, we see news reports about immigrants on their lives during a regular basis – some media welcoming them, some scaremongering about them. But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and immediately after almost always, no matter how deep the conflict. This enterprising accountinvestigative journalism they carry out, borrowing its name from outsiders to the world and the poem by Wilfred Owen, takes a different approach situations that refugees find themselves in spanning a full fifty years or more. It begins with 's rare that we find out the journeys from the first meeting of Siegfried Sassoon refugees themselves – and Rupert Brooke at one of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914. Marsh was this is a tireless supporter of modern painters and after rare opportunity to do that promising new writers, particularly poets. The journeyin this intelligent, or rather account powerful and moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the middle of meetingsa revolution in Iran, takes us fleeing to the western front and back to England, culminating in America as a reunion of two of the longestten-year-lived, Sassoon and David Jones, in 1964old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Callow0857058320|title=Charles Laughton: A Difficult ActorLord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and Anne McLean (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=Once ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a towering presence on stage and screen, journey to uncover the star of fifty films author's lost ancestor's life and forty plays, Charles Laughton seems largely forgotten these daysdeath. As an actor of a younger generation and keen admirer of Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his workgreat uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, Callow is well placed to bring him back to the forefigure who looms large over the book. He notes in died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his preface that uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the man has increasingly slipped out centre of public consciousness, and even within this book is whether it is possible for his own profession he is virtually unknown great uncle to anybody under be a hero whilst having fought for the age of forty|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581957</amazonuk>wrong side.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Sugden1788037812|title=NelsonThe Fraternity of the Estranged: A Dream of GloryThe Fight for Homosexual Rights in England, 1891-1908|author=Brian Anderson

|summary=I will admit Originally passed in 1885, the law that I didn't know what I was letting myself had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for when I saw 'Nelson82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: A Dream Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the margins of Glory' sitting society and studying homosexuality was common on the Bookbag shelfEuropean Continent, but I had just come back from Portsmouth barely talked about in the UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the scientific understanding of homosexuality, and a wander around on beginning the Victorystruggle for recognition and equality, so it was a bit hard leading to resistthe milestone legalisation of same-sex relationships in 1967. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951913</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate ChisholmBuckland_Zoo|title=Wits and WivesThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: Dr Johnson in the Company Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of Womennatural history|author=Richard Girling|rating=4.5

|summary=What's your mental image of As a Great Writer? Most people would probably say conservationist in Victorian England before the same thing: someone sitting in splendid isolationterm existed, probably in Frank Buckland was very much a garret, writing Great Words and hating themman ahead of his time. The idea of Great Writers having friendsSurgeon, or even a familynaturalist, is a bizarre one. Partly this is because most Great Writers were incredibly weird people. But there's another issue at play. We're simply not used to imagining them in contextveterinarian and eccentric sums him up perfectly, just one small part of a large and busy world. Our notion of biography is an incredibly fragmented one: despite the fact that one of the best indications of someone's character any biographer is how they interact immediately presented with other human beings, we expect biographers to essentially confine themselves a colourful tale to the person and their literary outputtell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951867</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Frances A GerardWilliams_Captain|title=Anna AmaliaCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Grand DuchessCambalong: Patron of Goethe His Military Life and SchillerTimes|author=Ivor George Williams

|summary=Anna Amalia In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of Brunswick, a Duchess the 17th Regiment of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach in the eighteenth century, is scarcely little more than a footnote in European royal history these daysFoot. Nevertheless it He was mainly through her patronage that the court of Weimar became one in command of the most artistically renowned of the time, troops and convicts on board a reputation it never lost throughout the increasingly militaristic times that Germany went through ship sailing from the age of Bismarck Plymouth to Sydney, Australia: his wife and beyondyoung son accompanied him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781550166</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Adrian Fort|title=Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Nancy, Lady AstorHe was not destined to live a long life, dying suddenly at the first woman to take her seat as an elected Member age of Parliament 34 at WestminsterBangalore, is one of those characters about whom it is surely impossible for anyone leaving his widow to write a dull biographyraise their two young sons. A determined character who inspired admiration, respect and exasperation Edwards' death left his widow in equal measure from most if a difficult position: not all only did she have their farm to manage, but she was also responsible for the convicts who had dealings with her, worked the land. Two years later she is well served by this latest in a long line of titles devoted to herwould marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409016X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julia JonesPeacock_mountain|title=Fifty Years In The Fiction Factory: Into The Working Mountain, A Life Of Herbert Allinghamof Nan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=Herbert Allingham was one of the most prolific authors of his Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time. Between 1886 and his death in 1936 he was a busy writer of melodramatic serial stories in so many books… I can understand the mass-market halfpenny papers which flourished at the turn of the century. Yet nothing he wrote was ever published in book form with his name to approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the magazine proprietors made fortunes myriad lesser-known authors short as well. So while their , like most other people I have my favourite genres, and favoured authors were , and while, like most other people I read the unsung heroes of the tradereviews and follow up on what appeals, I also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1899262075</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Peter Doggett|title=The Man Who Sold The World: 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>}} {{newreview|author=Victoria Glendinning|title=Raffles And the Golden Opportunity|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Although Raffles has gone down in history as the founder of Singapore his roots were far from grand. He had no advantages apart from his own drive and determination and his professional life began with a lowly clerkship with the East india Company, then as large and ungainly as many a government. When he went abroad Move on behalf of the Company he quickly learned the merits of doing something and asking permission afterwards, not least because of the time taken to contact London [[Newest Business and then receive a reply. Even if all went well this could take the best part of a year - by which time the original question could well be academic.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686032</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]