Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder That Changed the World1788360702|authortitle=Greg King and Sue Woolmans|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Possibly no assassination in history can have had such momentous consequences for the history of the world as that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie in SarajevoCharles, the capital of Bosnia, in June 1914. It was their killing which led directly to the outbreak of the First World War, just six weeks later.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230759572</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Red LoveThe Alternative Prince: The Story of an East German FamilyAn Unauthorised Biography|author=Maxim LeoEdzard Ernst|rating=54

|summary=Chances are there have For over forty years, Prince Charles has been major disagreements an ardent supporter of alternative medicine and splits in your familycomplementary therapies. One black sheep might have supported the wrong football team. Some of you will be strictly ''Strictly''Charles, the rest The Alternative Prince''X Factor''. But probably nothing compares to what went on in critically assesses the Leo household over decades in Eastern Berlin. One of our authorPrince's grandfathers, Gerhard, was too Jewish and bourgeois to survive life in Germany, fled to Franceopinions, beliefs and came back a Communist having fought aims against Nazismthe background of the scientific evidence. His counterpart Werner ended the war with some semblance There are few instances of PTSD, his beliefs being vindicated and more or less landed in Communist Berlin due to facts his relentless promotion of administration, yet became a fully-fledged Party activist. Author's mother Anne worked as a journalist on the Communist mouthpiece newspaper, even if she managed treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to doubt things she was forced to write during the Prague Spring and more. Her husband Wolf – Werner's son – in reputation of a similar industry was involved in sort-man who is proud of Photoshopping for propaganda, and often sabotaged his own output. He was violent, awkward, but very anti-establishment. And if you can't see how having a nonrefusal to apply evidence-Communist in such a family in the heightened times of Cold War Berlin would bebased, you certainly will after reading this gripping collective biographylogical reasoning to his ambitions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968516</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara A Perry1739805100|title=Rose KennedyLoving the Enemy: The Life and Times Building bridges in a time of a Political Matriarchwar|author=Andrew March

|summary=It's about fifty years since 'Loving the Enemy'' tells the assassination quite extraordinary story of President John F Kennedy and it was he (and particularly his death) author Andrew March's grandparents, who brought the Kennedy family first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in the attention early days of the Nazi regime in the 1930s. Fred, a new generation. An earlier generation sensitive and thoughtful man, had been split about some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the virtues (or otherwise) of his father, Joe Kennedy, multi millionaire and United States Ambassador growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Europe at the time. Fred's attempts to Great Britain. But behind both of these men was mother separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and wife, Rose Kennedy and Barbara A Perry has produced connections that lasted for a superb biography using letters, diaries and other archived material recently made availablelifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393068951</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Eminent ElizabethansWill Brooker|authortitle=Piers BrendonThe Truth About Lisa Jewell|rating=45

|summary=''Eminent Elizabethans'' is in effect a descendant Meet [[:Category:Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of the author’s ''Eminent Edwardians'most successful British authors I've never knowingly read. The latterNow meet Will Brooker, a volume one of short biographies the thousands of four British iconic figures less successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, and shows how 2021 drew the two closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, it seems, of her anecdote about cup cakes, the early twentieth centurywords of her latest book she was reciting, was and her being in turn inspired by Lytton Strachey’s barbed a 'Eminent Victorians'black lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at the author events I get to attend), published in 1918but pulled Brooker, a debunking professor of four Victorian heroes whom cultural studies who has swallowed Roland Barthes, down the iconoclast Strachey wished rabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to demonstrate had feet follow her through a year in the published author's life, working to make a success of claythe latest title, and struggling with the next in line. Jewell, due diligence appropriately done, agrees. And this is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532638</amazonuk>1529136024

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Sisters of the East EndMartha Leigh|authortitle=Helen BattenInvisible Ink: A Family Memoir|rating=3.5|genre=Historical FictionBiography|summary=Katie Crisp had never intended to become Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a nun. Raised by non-religious parentsslightly eccentric, her immediately recognisable upper middle class English family frowned upon organised religion and when Katie started secretly going to church. Her father is a Cambridge don, they strongly disapproved. When Katie ran to forever clacking away on his typewriter as he edits the aid complete correspondence of a stroke victimthe philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, she had a vision that changed her his life's work. She saw herself dressed as a nun with Her mother is a large silver cross hanging from her neckconcert pianist who practises for hours every day. She decided to follow her calling and join Neither parent is hugely interested in the community practicalities of St John life. There is love in the Divine, house but also darker undercurrents that a group of Anglican nuns dedicated to nursing and midwifery. She thus shed her old identity and became known as Sister Catherine Marychild does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091951771</amazonuk>1800460384

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jerry OppenheimerPolly Barton|title=Crazy Rich: Power, Scandal and Tragedy Inside the Johnson & Johnson DynastyFifty Sounds|rating=34.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Back in 1885 three brothers were inspired by a speech by Joseph ListerWhere do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the pioneer of antiseptic surgery, to create question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a range of surgical dressings while and if the world hadn't gone into melt- such things were previously unheard of - and down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this was the beginning of Johnson & Johnsonyear, providers of Band-Aids and baby powderbut I am not hopeful. It also brought phenomenal wealth And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the founders and a variety question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of trusts continued this down the years. The question in the first president of essay, which is on the company was Robert Wood Johnson. NFL fans will be aware of his great grandson, Robert Wood Johnson IV (known as sound ''giro' 'Woody')– which she describes as being, among other things, owner of the New York Jets. In between the two - and afterwards - there are a string sound of tragedies and scandals which put ''every party where you in mind of the Kennedy dynastyhave to introduce yourself''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0312662114</amazonuk>1913097501

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=America's Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha KittFrederic Gros|authortitle=John L WilliamsA Philosophy of Walking|rating=45|genre=EntertainmentPolitics and Society|summary=Two quotes on I confess I picked this one up from the back library in my pre-lockdown forage of the dust jacket testify random stuff. Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the power pages I have marked and public perception of Eartha Kitt during her lifetimereturn to its varying wisdom when I need to. Some books draw you in slowly. Orson Welles once called her ‘the most exciting woman This one had me in the world’first two pages, while to the CIA she was ‘a sadistic nymphomaniac’wherein Gros explains why ''walking is not a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857385755</amazonuk>1781688370

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Inferno Decoded: The essential companion to the myths, mysteries and locations of Dan Brown's InfernoSharon Blackie|authortitle=Michael HaagIf Women Rose Rooted|rating=45|genre=EntertainmentBiography|summary=Here be spoilersI normally say that you can tell how much a book means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Not so much in Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my review, but certainly in its subject, a very quickly produced companion guide to own copy before I've finished reading the latest [[:Category:Dan Brown|Dan Brown]] blockbusterone I've borrowed. ItI want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring's not so much a page'life-by-page guide, changing' – although it is definitely the first two and only time will tell about the third – but certainly serves as an educational clichés exist for a reason and intelligent look at the background to the biggest-selling book of 2013I'm not sure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781251800</amazonuk>1912836017

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0241446732|title=Serving VictoriaOur House is on Fire: Life Scenes of a Family and a Planet in the Royal HouseholdCrisis|author=Kate HubbardMalena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating=4.5|genre=BiographyPolitics and Society|summary=Biographies The Ernman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. Malena Ernman was an opera singer and Svante Thunberg took on most of the parenting of their two daughters. Then eleven-year-old Greta stopped eating and new of Queen Victoria, her husband talking and her children are plentiful enoughsister, Beata, then nine years old, struggled with what was happening. The vast majority of them are based In such circumstances, it's natural to seek a solution close to some extent on the diarieshome, memoirs and biographies of some of the most important figures who served herbut eventually, and Kate Hubbard has put these as well as supplementary archive papers it became clear 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 family that could be an exaggerationthey were ''burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. The court of Victoria may have been homely after If they were to find a fashion, but for the most part it was hardly livelyway to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532239</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Sellers0648684806|title=What Fresh Lunacy is This?Clara Colby: The Authorised Biography of Oliver ReedInternational Suffragist|author=John Holliday|rating=54

|summary=For rather more The path of his career than heClara Dorothy Bewick's life was probably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. At the time she was just three-years-old but because of some childhood ailment, his family she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and closest friends might have likedthree brothers. Instead, the name Oliver Reed was she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a byword for boozegood education, brawls both in and all types out of laddish behaviourschool. As Sellers’ very full She was the only child in the household and remarkably objective biography reveals, it her childhood was a funny yet sad life all at onceglorious. For although he repeatedly played up to By contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the image mid-west of the lovable rogue which he United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the family. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, had createdten pregnancies, underneath seven surviving children and died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the bad boy of popular legend he eldest girl, a heavy burden would fall on Clara and Wisconsin was at heart a professional actor who could always deliver a first-rate performance on the film set when requiredrude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147210112X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neal Thompson1789017977|title=A Curious ManRonnie and Hilda's Romance: The Strange and Brilliant Towards a New Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not' Ripley after World War II|author=Wendy Williams

|genre=BiographyHistory|summary=Robert LeRoy Ripley Ronnie Williams was indeed a curious manthe son of Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. He throve on curiosity There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to have been born in 1863, but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few years off his own and that of everyone elseage. By exploiting and never underestimating For a while, the public demand for trivia, and by being family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the right place at the right time just as the news 1929 Depression and broadcasting media were beginning five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to develop in America into the unassailable forces they were by the end of the century, a very different lifestyle. One thing he became one of did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his life. He joined the most successful men of the agearmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947204</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hermione LeePatti Smith|title=Edith WhartonYear of the Monkey

|summary=A prolific authorOn the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, Edith Whartonand unexpected moments. In a stranger's published output included over twenty novelswords, one a Pulitzer Prize winner''Anything is possible: after all, and 85 short stories, as well as poetry and books on interior design and travelit's the year of the monkey''. Born in As Smith wanders the United States coast of Santa Cruz in 1862solitude, she travelled extensively throughout Europereflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head-on, and settled permanently in France where she died as it the shifting political waters in 1937America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845952014</amazonuk>1526614758

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sylvie Simmons1912242052|title=I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard CohenO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=If you or I wanted ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to write a story about an imaginary figure who began as a novelist and poetfor work, then became acclaimed as a singer-songwriter in the swinging sixtiesminer, made and lost a fortunequarryman, became a monkshepherd or pack-horse driver, and returned but because he wanted to a musical career at an age when most mortals are well into retirement, for pleasure and found himself not only more popular than ever but also playing to the largest audiences in his entire life, it would be dismissed as total fantasyadventure. Nobody could make it up – His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and nobody needs toits literary consequences, because in a nutshell that is the life (so far) changed our view of Leonard Cohen, the subject of this biography and surely one of the music business’s most unique figuresworld''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549328</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=J C KannemeyerGraff_Find|title=J.M. Coetzee: A life in writingFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee is described as probably the most celebrated and decorated writer throughout the English-speaking world. The author When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a plastic folder of sixteen published novelshandwritten notes from his journal, he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Booker Prize twicedidn't take much notice of it. At the same time he has guarded his privacy jealously, tending to decline interviews and requests to discuss his workage of 24, and refusing to collect prestigious awards in person. On one occasion he explained his absence by saying that he could not imagine Graff didn'anything better calculated to reduce me to misery'. One acquaintance claims to have attended several dinner parties at which t realise the gravity of the author pages he was a fellow guest and did not utter a single wordholding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922070084</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Vladimir Alexandrov1789016304|title=The Black RussianWar and Love: A family's testament of anguish, endurance and devotion in occupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin

|summary=Until I Melanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''The Diary of 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 book I had could be allowed to happen in a country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Most people believed that the occupation could never come across happen: even those who thought that the story of Frederick Bruce ThomasGermans might reach the city were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, 'that the Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the Black Russian'way that it did, beforebut initial protests melted away as the organisers became more circumspect. It is 's an atrocity on a remarkable tale vast scale but made up of rags to riches, tragedy, success against the odds and subsequent failuretens of thousands of individual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781855196</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lucy Moore1786893452|title=NijinskyThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri

|summary=The name Nijinsky is synonymous with dance from Here in the last days of imperial Russia. I must confess to knowing little West, we see news reports about him until I read thisimmigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, the first biography some scaremongering about them. But all of him for nearly forty yearsthose stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and for me it was a surprise almost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, outsiders to learn the world and the situations that his career was so tragically briefrefugees find themselves in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686180</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Diana Souhami|title=The Trials of Radclyffe Hall|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=It is a coincidence 's rare that we find out the year 1928 saw journeys from the first appearance of two English novels which were denounced refugees themselves – and initially suppressed on the grounds of obscenity and their potential this is a rare opportunity to corrupt innocent readers – D.H. Lawrence’s 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' and Radclyffe Hall's 'The Well of Loneliness'. Lawrence's many novelsdo that, stories and poems are widely read todayin this intelligent, but Hall powerful and her works are hardly remembered except moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was born in the middle of a minority. Diana Souhami has done her a service revolution in this generous yet deeply probing life of Iran, fleeing to America as a literary trailblazerten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878788</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami0857058320|title=Greta Lord Of All the Dead|author=Javier Cercas and CecilAnne McLean (translator)

|summary=The story of ''Lord Of All the notoriously reclusive film star from Sweden and the noted British photographer Dead'' is a curious one. Neither ever married, both were androgynous journey to uncover the author's lost ancestor's life and bisexual, plucked their eyebrows, and had numerous short-term relationshipsdeath. They were like chalk and cheese; Beaton was a compulsive writer and diarist, while Garbo was reluctant to pick up a pen even to sign her own name. He adored parties, publicity, dressing up in frocks and photographing himself or posing Cercas is searching for others the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the lens (he couldn’t look more feminine in two pictures of him in frocks by Dorothy Wilding from 1925 if he tried)Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, while she was very much an early bed at night personCercas' great uncle, preferred to wear unfussy men’s clothes, and was reluctant to be photographed 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 all if she could help it. It is significant that the one picture centre of them together in the this book, taken in London in 1951, shows her deliberately hiding her face behind what looks like is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a handbaghero whilst having fought for the wrong side.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780878869</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Diana Souhami1788037812|title=Natalie and Romaine|rating=3|genre=Biography|summary=The main focus Fraternity of the book is the relationship between Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks, two very well-off American lesbians who first met Estranged: The Fight for Homosexual Rights 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 insistenceEngland, it is less a double biography than a survey of the Sapphic society life which centred on Paris for much of this period. Barney, a poet, was a flamboyant character who used to say that 'living was the first of all the arts' and often vowed to make 'my life itself into a poem'. Brooks, a painter whose self1891-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>}} {{newreview1908|author=Thomas Wright|title=Circulation: William Harvey's Revolutionary IdeaBrian Anderson

|summary='Circulation' by Thomas Wright is Originally passed in 1885, the law that had made homosexual relations a biography of English physician William Harvey’s lifecrime remained in place for 82 years. But during this time, restrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, three books on the story nature of homosexuality appeared. They were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, as well as the 'birth of a theory'heterosexual Havelock Ellis. It takes Exploring the reader through time before, during margins of society and after studying homosexuality was common on the creation and completion of ''De Motu Cordis''European Continent, but barely talked about in which Harvey famously outlines the most comprehensive antecedent UK, so the publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the mechanism scientific understanding of blood circulation as we know it today. The combination of the writer's aptitude for storytelling homosexuality, and beginning the intriguing life of the individual about whom he writes makes struggle for a fascinating read, allowing one to course through chronologically arranged chapters on Harvey’s life recognition and worksequality, mixed with briefer essays on subject matters ranging from the history of vivisection leading to the philosophical underpinnings milestone legalisation of Harvey’s worksame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552698</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon MorrisonBuckland_Zoo|title=The Love and Wars Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of Lina Prokofievnatural history|author=Richard Girling

|summary=This book is As a biography of and based largely on the letters of Lina Prokofiev. Born Carlina Codina conservationist 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 of Lina Llubera, she met Victorian England before the Soviet composer and pianist Serge Prokofievterm existed, best remembered for the children’s musical fable ‘Peter and the Wolf’. They married in 1924 and for the first thirteen years of their marriage they lived in Paris, where two sons, Oleg and Svyatoslav, were born to them. Soon after moving to Moscow in 1936 their marriage fell apart. In 1941 he left her for a writer, Mira Mendelson, 24 years his junior, 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 Frank Buckland was very much. When a man ahead of diminutive stature was born in rural Romania in the 1860s nobody was to know 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 dwarfism. But history has pieced together all that followed, including the careers those children had as a performance troupe, belting out showtunes to their own accompaniment, and acting in their own tragi-comic skitstime. And then having the limelight stolen from them by the NazisSurgeon, and a transportation to Auschwitz. And then being surprisingly savednaturalist, veterinarian and given what passed as a cushty lifeeccentric sums him up perfectly, fed and together, but tortured at the hands of the camp doctor, avidly researching anything he thought might shed clues on what singled out his Aryan race'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, would have known. As one of the more ominous sentences you'll read all year has it – 'Mengele had plans for them'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849544646</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Ackroyd|title=Wilkie Collins|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=While Peter Ackroyd has published some extremely long books over the last few years, he has also been responsible for some commendably concise volumes as well. This life of the Victorian novelist any biographer is one of the latter, the latest in his series of 'Brief Lives', which have also included Chaucer, the painter Turner and [[Poe by Peter Ackroyd|Edgar Allan Poe]].|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287471</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gary Raymond|title=3-Minute JRR Tolkien: A Visual Biography of The World's Most Revered Fantasy Writer|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=When something immediately presented with such a built-in cult base 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, and then to try and buy everything worthwhile with even a tenuous link to the object of their affections, while avoiding the mountain of crud that could deluge the unwary. Such it will be until the third movie part of ''The Hobbit'' is safely behind us, and the six-film, three-month long Blu-Ray box set is on the shelves. Tolkien enthusiasts of course have a precarious situation – so great do they rightly hold the originals, and so low can the quality of the spin-offs be, there are some who will never be satisfied. But there remains the newcomer, freshly inspired to find out more, and those at least will certainly be able to enjoy this beginner's guide colourful tale to [[:Category:J R R Tolkien|J R R Tolkien]]tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908005831</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John FisherWilliams_Captain|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!'Captain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: A His Military Life in Jokes and PicturesTimes|author=Ivor George Williams

|summary=I grew up watching Tommy Cooper, and watching my dad do impressions In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Tommy CooperFoot. I thought he He was hilarious (in command of the real Tommy!) troops and loved convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, Australia: his expressions as he repeatedly tried wife and failed young son accompanied him. He was not destined to do magic tricks! This book is rather unusual as although it is live a biography long life, dying suddenly at the age of sorts34 at Bangalore, giving information about Tommyleaving his widow to raise their two young sons. Edwards's life and death left his history widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but she was also responsible for the convicts who worked the world of entertainment, it isn't text heavy, and so mostly Tommy's story is told through photographs and picturesland. Two years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Unwin (editor)Peacock_mountain|title=Newcomers' Lives: Into The Story Mountain, A Life of Immigrants as Told in Obituaries from The TimesNan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock

|summary=Mostly we choose what books to read because there is so little time and so many books… I can understand the approach, but I also think I was not the only person who at first glance found we sell ourselves short by it, and we sell the title and submyriad lesser-title slightly misleadingknown authors short as well. For me it conjured up visions of those who came across on So while, like most other people I have my favourite genres, and favoured authors, and while, like most other people I read the ‘Windrush’ in 1948 reviews and the life they led follow up on settling in Britain – andwhat appeals, perhaps, the lives of the more famous (assuming there were some) in obituary formI also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1441159177</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Artemis Cooper|title=Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The sub-title of this biography is highly appropriate, for the ninety-six years of Patrick Leigh Fermor were packed with adventure. Born in 1915, he was something of a maverick at school, intellectually gifted but perpetually naughty, and his punishments for various refractions included suspensions and even expulsions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719554497</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Selina Guinness|title=The Crocodile by the Door: The Story of a House, a Farm and a Family|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=Selina Guinness lived at Tibradden as a child and in 2002 she and her husband-to-be, Colin Graham, moved back to the house when her elderly uncle Charles became frail. The surname might lead you to suspect that there were brewery millions in the background but this wasn't the case. The couple were young academics and doing what needed to be done at Tibradden would need to be done in addition to full-time jobs. The house was on the outskirts of Dublin - 'derelict fields' if you were a property developer or the last defence against the encroaching city if you were not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844881571</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Harry Ricketts|title=Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great War|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=The majority of recent books on the War Poets tend to focus Move on their lives during and immediately after the conflict. This enterprising account, borrowing its name from the poem by Wilfred Owen, takes a different approach in spanning a full fifty years or more. It begins with the first meeting of Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke at one of Eddie Marsh’s breakfasts in July 1914. Marsh was a tireless supporter of modern painters and after that promising new writers, particularly poets. The journey, or rather account of meetings, takes us to the western front and back to England, culminating in a reunion of two of the longest-lived, Sassoon [[Newest Business and David Jones, in 1964.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845951808</amazonuk>}}Finance Reviews]]