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[[Category:New Reviews|Biography]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrea Wulf1788360702|title=Charles, The Invention Alternative Prince: An Unauthorised Biography|author=Edzard Ernst|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=For over forty years, Prince Charles has been an ardent supporter of Nature: alternative medicine and complementary therapies. ''Charles, The Adventures Alternative Prince'' critically assesses the Prince's opinions, beliefs and aims against the background of Alexander von Humboldtthe scientific evidence. There are few instances of his beliefs being vindicated and his relentless promotion of treatments which have no scientific support has done considerable damage to the reputation of a man who is proud of his refusal to apply evidence-based, logical reasoning to his ambitions.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1739805100|title=Loving the Lost Hero Enemy: Building bridges in a time of Sciencewar|author=Andrew March
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Alexander von Humboldt was born ''Loving the Enemy'' tells the quite extraordinary story of author Andrew March's grandparents, who first met when grandfather Fred Clayton went to Dresden to teach in Berlin the early days of the Nazi regime in 1769, the younger brother of Wilhelm von Humboldt who would become a Prussian minister but who is perhaps better remembered as a philosopher and linguist1930s. The family was well-to-do and both brothers benefitted from an excellent education, although they lacked affection from their emotionally-distant widowed motherFred, but it was a legacy from her which would fund Alexander's first explorations. His first travels would be in Europe where he met sensitive and was influenced by people such as Joseph Banksthoughtful man, President had some vague ideas of "building bridges" which may guard against the Royal Society, who had travelled with Thomas Cook. But it was his travels growing hostilities between nations unfolding in Latin America which would lay Europe at the foundations for his lifetime. Fred's workattempts to separate individual people from ideology weren't universally successful but he did make friendships and connections that lasted for a lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848548982</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephen ParkerWill Brooker|title= Bertolt Brecht - A Literary Life|rating= 3.5|genre= Biography|summary= Drawing on letters, diaries, and unpublished material, Stephen Parker offers a rich and detailed account of Brecht's life and work, and paints a new picture of one of the twentieth century's most controversial cultural icons – a man whose plays are performed more in Germany than Shakespeare's. Examining Brecht's beginnings in Bavaria, through the First World War and onto the beginnings of a career. Then, Brecht's journey through Weimar Germany where he became a political artist, struggling with the fascists who would eventually drive him to exile in Denmark, and onto life in the US – suspected of being a Soviet agent, before the eventual return to Germany, and a later life plagued with illness. This is a fascinating book about the man, his work, and the climates in which he wrote and influenced his work, as well as providing insights into the thought processes, health, and women who filled the world of Brecht.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1474240003</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Dominic Pearce|title= Henrietta Maria|rating= 4.5|genre= History|summary=The phrase 'tragic Queen' is an often overused one, but the French princess who became the second Stuart Queen Consort of Britain surely has as strong a claim as any to the title. In British history she was unique in that she not only lived to see her husband defeated in civil war, but also sentenced to death and in effect judicially murdered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445645475</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Philip Weinstein|title=Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of RageTruth About Lisa Jewell|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=''Jonathan FranzenMeet [[:Category: The Comedy Lisa Jewell|Lisa Jewell]], one of Ragethe most successful British authors I'' makes frequent mention ve never knowingly read. Now meet Will Brooker, one of the thousands of Franzen's attendance at Swathmore College in Pennsylvanialess successful authors I quite confidently never have read. This book starts with the two meeting each other, as well, where he graduated in 1977 and where shows how 2021 drew the authortwo closer and closer together. The meeting was some unspecified combination, Philip Weinstein wasit seems, until last year Professor of English. An earlier graduateher anecdote about cup cakes, the novelist James A. Michner left his entire estate words of some 10 million dollars to the college her latest book she was reciting, and the proceeds from his works, including the one on which her being in a ''South Pacificblack lace mini-dress with gold brocade'' was founded. It was (certainly a get-up never commonly worn at Swarthmore that Franzen met his wifethe author events I get to attend), but pulled Brooker, where she had been a gifted classmate. Weinstein, the author professor of cultural studies who teaches therehas swallowed Roland Barthes, has personally known Franzen for over two decades and down the latter has given him a personal interview and been otherwise in contact with him for some considerable timerabbit-hole that is Jewell's diverse output. If this all seems just Brooker decides he'd like nothing more than to follow her through a little blurred year in its boundariesthe published author's life, not working to say incestuousmake a success of the latest title, then that might not matterand struggling with the next in line. However Jewell, Franzen's work closely concern itself with shamedue diligence appropriately done, guilt, incest, rage and humiliationagrees. And this is the result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1501307177</amazonuk>1529136024
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Adam SismanMartha Leigh|title= John le CarreInvisible Ink: The BiographyA Family Memoir
|rating= 5
|genre= Biography
|summary=Some twenty years ago David Cornwell Martha Leigh begins her book talking about a childhood spent in a slightly eccentric, better known immediately recognisable upper middle class English family. Her father is a Cambridge don, forever clacking away on his typewriter as novelist John le Carré, told a couple he edits the complete correspondence of wouldthe philosopher Jean-be writers about him that he did not believe in Jacques Rousseau, his life'authorised' biographies or critiquess work. Adam Sisman, Her mother is a concert pianist who has since then been granted exclusive access to practises for hours every day. Neither parent is hugely interested in the man and his private archive, can therefore consider himself practicalities of life. There is love in the house but also darker undercurrents that a lucky manchild does not fully understand but knows is there.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408827921</amazonuk>1800460384
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Catherine HewittPolly Barton|title= The Mistress of ParisFifty Sounds|rating= 4.5|genre= BiographyPolitics and Society|summary= Born 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 while and if the world hadn't gone into poverty, nomelt-one could have guessed that the girl who would one day be known as Valtesse de la Bigne down I would have achieved greatnessvisited by now. This is the tale of her rise to wealth and power – starting in a dress shop as a thirteen I may get there later this year old, but fast becoming a courtesan who would be fought over by some of I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the greatest men of question ''why Japan?'' She explains her time. A woman who kept an air feelings in respect of mystery about many details of her lifethe question in the first essay, Catherine Hewitt nevertheless paints an incredible story around which is on the gapssound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, and this proves to be both a full and intriguing biographyamong other things, and a fascinating portrait the sound of the time period''every party where you have to introduce yourself''. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848319266</amazonuk>1913097501
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Despina StratigakosFrederic Gros|title=Hitler at HomeA Philosophy of Walking
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryPolitics and Society|summary=''Please do not make Hitler look good.'' Words to live by that I confess I picked this one up from the author library in my pre-lockdown forage of this volume received from her mother, a Kefalonian who knew Nazi abuse when she saw itrandom stuff. Rest assured Now I have to go out an buy my own copy so that I can turn down the book does not do that, but it certainly provides a much fresher, more eloquent pages I have marked and interesting look at certain aspects of his life, and introduces us return to its varying wisdom when I need to someone else from the Nazi times – Gerdy Troost, who might as well be summarised as Hitler's interior designer. Some books draw you in slowly. In picking apart the entire life of Troost, the nature of her work and how the buildings and décor she surrounded Hitler in became a part of his propaganda, we get a refreshingly new yet authoritative book, that for those with an interest This one had me in this side of our recent history will easily be considered one of, if not thefirst two pages, best book of the year. The person who does come out with the laurels worn highest wherein Gros explains why ''walking is our authornot a sport''.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>030018381X</amazonuk>1781688370
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elizabeth NortonSharon Blackie|title= The Temptation Of Elizabeth TudorIf Women Rose Rooted|rating= 4.5
|genre= Biography
|summary= Life, or rather survival, in Tudor England was I normally say that you can tell how much a precarious businessbook means to me by how many pages have corners turned down. Being close Perhaps an even greater measure of impact is setting out to buy my own copy before I've finished reading the crown was anything but a guarantee of safety, as the fate of two of King Henry VIIIone I's Queen's amply demonstratedve borrowed. His second daughter Elizabeth led a charmed I want to avoid clichés like 'powerful' 'inspiring' 'life -changing' – although it is definitely the first two and went on to reign as Queen only time will tell about the third – but clichés exist for over forty years, but she too had some narrow escapes when her liberty if a reason and I'm not her very existence was under threatsure I can succinctly put it any better.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784081728</amazonuk>1912836017
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Jeffrey James0241446732|title= Edward IVOur House is on Fire: Glorious Son Scenes of Yorka Family and a Planet in Crisis|author=Malena Ernman, Greta Thunberg, Beata Thunberg and Svante Thunberg|rating= 4.5|genre= HistoryPolitics and Society|summary= Medieval England's own game of thrones, The Wars of the Roses, was at the centre of a turbulent ageErnman / Thunberg family seemed perfectly normal. In retrospect much of the history of medieval England, between the Norman conquest Malena Ernman was an opera singer and the advent Svante Thunberg took on most of the Tudors, seems to have been a chronicle parenting of instability often verging on and sometimes erupting into rebellion or civil wartheir two daughters. The fifteenthThen eleven-year-century conflicts between the houses of Lancaster old Greta stopped eating and talking and Yorkher sister, Beata, lasting intermittently for thirty then nine yearsold, were more protracted and even more brutal than the rest, struggled with several fierce battles and sudden changes of fortune for the two rival families, both descended from King Edward IIIwhat was happening. The riseIn such circumstances, fall and rise again of King Edward IV was it's natural to seek a constant theme of solution close to home, but eventually, it became clear to the warsfamily that they were ''burned-out people on a burned-out planet''. If they were to find a way to live happily again their solution would need to be radical.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1445646218</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Spencer Leigh0648684806|title= Frank Sinatra: An Extraordinary Life|rating= 4|genre= Entertainment|summary= Frank Sinatra was undoubtedly a legend. In a notoriously precarious profession, he managed to stay at the top, or very close to it, for a remarkably long time. Despite a few half-hearted flirtations with other styles which may have strayed a little from his comfort zone, he remained true to his musical style, won the respect of younger generations, and never really went out of fashion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857160869</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Neil Hegarty|title= Frost: That Was The Life That WasClara Colby: The Authorised Biography|rating= 5|genre= Biography|summary= Just a glance at this book is enough to make us realise, or remind us, that Sir David Frost was a towering presence in the world of television for around half a century. From the days when he stormed the barricades of cosy light entertainment at the start of the swinging sixties, to his major political interviews and his position as one of the founding fathers of TV-am, he was a cornerstone of the industry. Without him, the history of broadcasting during that period would surely have been very different.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753556707</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewInternational Suffragist|author=John Van der Kiste|title=Jeff Lynne: The Electric Light Orchestra - Before and AfterHolliday|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Jeff Lynne grew up in a Birmingham suburb right at the end The path of 1947: even as a child he Clara Dorothy Bewick's life was passionate about music and was a much respected guitarist as a teenagerprobably determined when her family emigrated to the USA. He At the time she was a member of various semijust three-professional groups years- critical acclaim came when he fronted Idle Race in the late sixties old but because of some childhood ailment, she wasn't allowed to sail with her parents and popularity three brothers. Instead, she remained with her grandparents, who doted on her and saw that she received a degree good education, both in and out of commercial success arrived when he joined school. She was the only child in the popular group The Movehousehold and her childhood was glorious. Whilst still playing with that group he coBy contrast, her family had become pioneer farmers in the mid-founded, along with Roy Woodwest of the United States and life was hard, as Clara was to find out when she and her grandparents eventually went to join the groundbreaking Electric Light Orchestrafamily. Clara would only know her mother for a few months: she was married for fifteen years, but it was with Wood's departure that Lynne turned what had been an occasionally uneasy fusion of classical ten pregnancies, seven surviving children and rock into died in childbirth not long after Clara arrived. As the eldest girl, a successful heavy burden would fall on Clara and popular actWisconsin was a rude awakening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781554927</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Findlay1789017977|title=Chasing Lost Time|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary= A Catholic convert Ronnie and a homosexual, a socialite party goer yet deeply lonely, a secretive spy and a public man of letters, Scott Moncrieff was an enigma. His translation of Proust’s Hilda''A La Recherché du Temps Perdu'' was highly praised, and Moncrieff was also celebrated as s Romance: Towards a decorated hero of New Life after World War One. Here, his great-great niece Jean Findlay skilfully retells the life of an intriguing man – and one whom I was utterly charmed by. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507080</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewII|author= Desmond Seward|title= Renishaw Hall: the story of the SitwellsWendy Williams|rating= 4.5|genre= BiographyHistory|summary= Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire, has been Ronnie Williams was the home son of the Sitwells since 1625Thomas Henry Williams (known as Harry) and Ethel Wall. Though the history of the house and its family go back There's some doubt as to whether or not they were ever married or even Harry's birthdate: he claimed to the early Stuart erahave been born in 1863, as Seward tells us in but he was already many years older than Ethel and he might well have shaved a few wonderfully concise chaptersyears off his age. For a while, it is really with the appearance of family was quite well-to-do but disaster struck in the eccentric Sir George Sitwell 1929 Depression and five-year-old Ronnie had to adjust to a very different lifestyle. One thing he did inherit from his father was his need to be well-turned-out and this would stay with him throughout his three famous children that life. He joined the narrative comes into its ownarmy at eighteen in 1942.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178396183X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter Finn and Petra CouveePatti Smith|title=The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=One of the many things to come out of this incredibly clear and readable book is that we Brits, for all our literary heritage, have got nothing like an equivalent to Boris Pasternak. He or she would have to sell like Rowling, regularly capture the enjoyment and spirit of the nation a la Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremonies, and at the same time have the cultural heft of Larkin, Rushdie, Graham Greene and more combined. Someone connected with choosing recipients Year of the Nobel Prize declare him here to be the Soviet TS Eliot, but that's nothing like. So the reader probably has to stretch herself to see someone so well-respected and well-loved for his verse, who spent twelve years and more on a huge, society-defining novel, only for the country to nix every plan to get it published.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581345</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Marlena de Blasi|title=The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper ClubMonkey
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary= Author Marlena de Blasi lives in On the (as far as I can tell from having a quick google)coast of Santa Cruz, beautiful small Italian city Patti Smith enters the lunar year of Orvieto – deep in the beautiful Umbrian countrysidemonkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. Having lived there for some timeIn a stranger's words, she gradually becomes aware ''Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club – a group monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of Italian ladies who meet once Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a week for supper, and to talk. Whilst it takes year that brings huge shifts in her some time, Marlena eventually manages to be accepted into the group, and begins to cook and eat with these unique and fascinating ladies, sharing both tales of life, love, - loss and deathageing are faced head-on, and taking part as it the shifting political waters in delicious home cooked mealsAmerica. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091954304</amazonuk>1526614758
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ackroyd1912242052|title=Charlie ChaplinO Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=BiographyArt|summary=Charlie Chaplin dominated ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the formative years of first person to walk the cinemamountains alone, not because he had to for work, as actor and directora miner, like no other. As we are told in an early chapter of this bookquarryman, on his first visit to America in 1910shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he is alleged wanted to have shouted, ‘I am coming to conquer youfor pleasure and adventure. Every man woman His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and child shall have my name on their lips!’ Within a few years he had indeed conquered its literary consequences, changed our view of the entire movie-going world|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099287560</amazonuk>''.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sean SmithGraff_Find|title=Tom Jones - The LifeFind Another Place|author=Ben Graff|rating=43.5|genre=BiographyAutobiography|summary=Few singers have sustained When Ben Graff's grandfather Martin handed him a career over half a century and appealed to succeeding generations in the way that the former Thomas John Woodward plastic folder of Treforest has managed to do. Almost written off during a lean period or twohandwritten notes from his journal, he proved himself didn't take much notice of it. At the master age of re-invention24, and now in his mid-70s Graff didn't realise the gravity of the pages he is loved and revered as something of a national treasurewas holding.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000810445X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Derek Niemann1789016304|title=War and Love: A Nazi in the Family: The Hidden Story family's testament of an SS Family anguish, endurance and devotion in Wartime Germanyoccupied Amsterdam|author=Melanie Martin
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=IMelanie Martin read about what happened to Dutch Jews in occupied Amsterdam during World War II and was entranced by what she discovered, particularly in ''m sure someone somewhere has rewritten The Devil's Dictionary to include the following – Diary of Ann Frank''but then realised that her own family: noun; place where the greatest secrets are kept''s stories were equally fascinating. The Niemann family is no exception. It was long known that grandfather Karl was in Germany A hundred and seven thousand Jews were deported from the city during the Second World Warwar years, people but only five thousand survived and Martin could not understand how this could easily work that out from the family biography. Yet little was spoken of, apart from him being an office-bound worker, either be allowed to happen in logistics or financea country with liberal values who were resistant to German occupation. Since Most people believed that the occupation could never happen: even those who thought that the War two of three surviving siblings had relocated to Germans might reach the Glasgow environscity were convinced that they would soon be pushed back, and there was even a family quip concerning Goebbels and Gorbals (''family: noun; place where that the worst things are spoken Amsterdammers would never allow what happened to escalate in the best way''). What was a surprise to our author, and many of his relatives, was that things were a lot closer to the former than had been expectedit did, for Karl was such an office worker – for but initial protests melted away as the SSorganisers became more circumspect. With It's an atrocity on a lot vast scale but made up of family history finally out tens of the closet thousands of silent mouths, and with incriminating photographic evidence revealed in unlikely ways, the whole truth can be known. But this is certainly not just of interest to that one small familyindividual tragedies.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722222</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Miranda Richmond Mouillot1786893452|title=A Fifty Year SilenceThe Ungrateful Refugee|author=Dina Nayeri
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=The story follows Here in the narrator’s quest to find out why her mother’s parents abruptly parted and never reconciledWest, we see news reports about immigrants on a regular basis – some media welcoming them, or even spoke another word to one anothersome scaremongering about them. We follow Miranda as she goes backwards But all of those stories are written by journalists – almost always western, and forwards between her Grandmotheralmost always, no matter how deep the investigative journalism they carry out, whom she is very close outsiders to, the world and her Grandfather, whom she has always found a difficult characterthe situations that refugees find themselves in. She is determined to get to It's rare that we find out the bottom of journeys from the story which takes her through terrible first hand accounts of events leading up refugees themselves – and this is a rare opportunity to do that, in this intelligent, powerful and throughout World War Two and what Nazi occupied Europe moving work by Dina Nayeri -someone who was like for born in the Jewish. She is driven by the need to know what could cause two people to part so completely after going through so much togethermiddle of a revolution in Iran, and it’s become her academic life fleeing to find outAmerica as a ten-year-old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182583</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Greene0857058320|title=Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into Lord Of All the Heart of RussiaDead|rating=4.5|genreauthor=Politics Javier Cercas and Society|summary=It's no mistake that the cover of my edition of this book is a photo where the Trans-Siberian Railway is horizontal in the frame. It's well known for going east-west, left to right across the map of the largest country by far in the world. 9,288 kilometres from Moscow to the eastern stretches of Russia, it could only be a long, thin line across the cover, as it is in our imagination of it as a form of transport and a travel destination in its own right. So when this book mentions it as the spine or backbone of Russia a couple of times, that's got to be of a prone Russia – one lying down, not upright or active. David Greene, a stalwart of northern American radio journalism, uses this book to see just how active or otherwise Russia and Russians are – and finds their lying down to be quite a definite verdict, as well as a slight indictment. It's no mistake either for this cover to have people in the frame alongside the train carriages, for the people met both riding and living alongside the tracks of the Railway are definitely the ribs of the piece.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883709</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Frances Welch|title=Rasputin: A Short LifeAnne McLean (translator)
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=Was Grigori Rasputin, ''Lord Of All the Dead'' is a journey to uncover the Siberian peasant turned mystic author's lost ancestor's life and death. Cercas is searching for the meaning behind his great uncle's death in the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Mena, Cercas' great uncle, is the time bomb figure who almost single-handedly precipitated looms large over the book. He died relatively young whilst fighting for Francisco Franco's forces. Cercas ruminates on why his uncle fought for this dictator. The question at the collapse centre of this book is whether it is possible for his great uncle to be a hero whilst having fought for the Russian Empire in 1917, a genuine holy man or an evil-minded reprobate and total disaster?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178072232X</amazonuk>wrong side.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes1788037812|title=HRCThe Fraternity of the Estranged: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Hillary Clinton initially came to our attention as First Lady and even then she might have faded into international obscurity had it not been The Fight for the way Homosexual Rights in which she managed to hold her head high during those unfortunate incidents with Bill - well, HRC wasn't ''involved'' but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Then she re-emerged through the fog of the George W Bush presidency with her bid to gain the Democratic nominationEngland, losing in a hotly contested series of primaries to Barack Obama 1891- and went on to become his Secretary of State. Now the question is whether or not she will make another run for President in 2016.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099594692</amazonuk>}}{{newreview1908|author=Laura Thompson|title=Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford The BiographyBrian Anderson
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=There can have been few more extraordinary families Originally passed in British society and cultural life during the early twentieth century than the Mitfords1885, the six daughters and one son of Baron Redesdalelaw that had made homosexual relations a crime remained in place for 82 years. The only sonBut during this time, killed in action during the Second World Warrestrictions on same-sex relationships did not go unchallenged. Between 1891 and 1908, led an unexceptional life away from three books on the headlines, but four nature of his sisters more than made up for himhomosexuality appeared. DianaThey were written by two homosexual men: Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds, wife of as well as the notorious Sir Oswald Mosley, never renounced her admiration for Hitler or heterosexual Havelock Ellis. Exploring the Fascist movement, while Unity, who shared her beliefs, shot herself margins of society and studying homosexuality was common on the day war broke out European Continent, but lingered pathetically for another brain-damaged eight yearsbarely talked about in the UK, and so the fiercely left-wing Jessica became an active member publications of these men were hugely significant – contributing to the American Communist Party. Compared to them Nancyscientific understanding of homosexuality, and beginning the eldest struggle for recognition and the subject of this biographyequality, seems leading to have been the most balanced and least eccentric milestone legalisation of them allsame-sex relationships in 1967.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784082295</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan KennedyBuckland_Zoo|title=Oscar & LucyThe Man Who Ate the Zoo: Frank Buckland, forgotten hero of natural history|author=Richard Girling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=With As a conservationist in Victorian England before the film about Alan Turingterm existed, Frank Buckland was very much a man ahead of his time. Surgeon, naturalist, ''The Imitation Game'' getting rave reviews veterinarian and award nominations righteccentric sums him up perfectly, left and centre, the sterling work done by the Bletchley Park cryptographers during WWII any biographer is quite high in our minds. But Enigma wasn't the only code broken and Turing wasn't the only one doing secret but heroic workimmediately presented with a colourful tale to tell. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>095646968X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David LodgeWilliams_Captain|title=Lives in WritingCaptain Ronald Campbell of Bombala Station, Cambalong: His Military Life and Times|author=Ivor George Williams
|rating=4
|genre=EntertainmentBiography|summary=David Lodge Lives In March 1829 Ann Parker married Captain J A Edwards of the 17th Regiment of Foot. He was in Writing. So blares command of the cover of my editiontroops and convicts on board a ship sailing from Plymouth to Sydney, Australia: his wife and it's not far wrongyoung son accompanied him. When he's He was not entertaining us with his [[:Category:David Lodge|writing career]] (now in its third, more erudite and destined to me more serious stagelive a long life, after dying suddenly at the first third age of comic light touches34 at Bangalore, before he found leaving his metier – and fame with TV adaptations– with comedies about the social and sexual lives of academe) hewidow to raise their two young sons. Edwards's teaching about and around writing. When I death left his widow in a difficult position: not only did she have their farm to manage, but she was younger I also read around writing – literature books, in other words – and Lodge's were among those I turned toresponsible for the convicts who worked the land. So this book and its contents are a welcome step back down a very familiar roadTwo years later she would marry Captain Ronald Campbell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587769</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Van der KistePeacock_mountain|title=Into The Prussian Princesses: The Sisters Mountain, A Life of Kaiser Wilhelm IINan Shepherd|author=Charlotte Peacock
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Kaiser Wilhelm II Mostly we choose what books to read because there is well known so little time and not for so many books… I can understand the best of reasons approach, but I also think we sell ourselves short by it, and he's certainly overwe sell the myriad lesser-shadowed his six younger siblings. John Van der Kiste's first biography was of his father, Kaiser Friedrich III and he has also written about Emperor Wilhelm II so he is known authors short as well placed to write about the three youngest children Kaiser Friedrich and Victoria, Princess Royal. Originally he intended to write about Friedrich's second daughterSo while, but it quickly became obvious that the like most satisfying biography - for reader other people I have my favourite genres, and author - would be a biography of Victoriafavoured authors, Sophie and Margaretwhile, their mother's ''kleebatt'' or triolike most other people I read the reviews and follow up on what appeals, as they were knownI also have a third-string to my reading bow: randomness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00QKROC9W</amazonuk>
}}
 
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