==Biography==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Claire Tomalin
|title=Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=I came to this biography having read three of Hardy's novels, two quite recently, and some of his poetry, but knowing very little about him as a person. Claire Tomalin has brought him admirably to life in these pages.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141017414</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jenifer Roberts
|summary=The chances are that most people who have any knowledge of classical music, even if it's only some familiarity with short soundbites, will have something by Handel embedded in their subconscious – probably a few bars from 'Hallelujah Chorus'. There are few other composers of whom the same can be said. The exceptions – Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mozart come to mind – also seem a little better known as historical figures, while Handel remains something of an unknown quantity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082027</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeremy Seabrook
|title=The Refuge and the Fortress: Britain and the Flight From Tyranny
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Mongrel nation and successful purveyor of multiculturalism or bunch of xenophobic Little Englanders addicted to past glories? In truth, of course, it's something of both. Prejudice against asylum seekers is nothing new to Britons. A genuine and human commitment to refugees is nothing new either. Alongside the heroic Kindertransport in the 1930s, we may compare the anti-Semitic rabble-rousing of some newspapers and Oswald Moseley's blackshirts.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230218784</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Brian W Pugh and Paul R Spiring
|title=On the Trail of Arthur Conan Doyle: An Illustrated Devon Tour
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=This slim volume, comprising just four chapters, is both a detailed chronology of the life of Arthur Conan Doyle and, for those that want to follow in the footsteps of ACD (I adopt the authors' abbreviation gladly), 'The Complete Arthur Conan Doyle Devon Tour' – locations that inspired The Hound of the Baskervilles and more.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846241987</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Russell Miller
|title=The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Having reviewed several other biographies of well-known authors in the last few months, it struck me that most of these wordsmiths were dedicated writers, famous for their books and little if anything else, except perhaps for the odd isolated newsworthy incident. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could not have been more different. Although his name is indelibly associated with that of Sherlock Holmes, arguably the most renowned fictional detective of all, he had several careers in one.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0436206137</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paul Kieve
|title=Hocus Pocus
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=''Hocus Pocus'' is part biography of the greatest magicians of all time, part fictional tale of the author meeting them as they come alive from his posters, and part magic instruction manual. All the parts foster an interest in magic, and act as an inspiration to the next generation of magicians.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>074759094X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Simon Winchester
|title=Bomb, Book and Compass
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=It is 1943 and a twin engined Douglas C-47 is making its way low over the mountains, using cloud cover to avoid Japanese Zero fighters. It lands right in the centre of China at Chungking - now known as Chongqing in pinyin - into the political and military chaos, which is wartime China. A tall man with spectacles emerges - this is Dr Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, a brilliant biologist and Cambridge don on an important mission of discovery to help save Chinese universities from the marauding Japanese enemy. In the intense 90-degree heat, he has just arrived from the cool dampness of Gonville and Caius College; his intensive studies begun, on behalf of the Royal Society and the British government, and also which will lead to the remarkable revelations and extensive history, in twenty four volumes and three million words, of Chinese Science and Technology.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670913782</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kirsten Ellis
|title=Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=It is hard to not be fascinated by Lady Hester Stanhope. A relative of the Pitts, she grew up in an England where King George III was undergoing periodic bouts of madness, where revolutionary France evoked feelings of extreme reaction as well as intense interest, and where women – noblewomen in particular, were expected to contract good marriages and support their husbands. Hester resisted. At an age older than her own mother had been when she died, Hester left England for the Middle East, never to return.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007170300</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lyndall Gordon
|title=Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
|summary=It is hardly surprising that the lives of the Brontës have attracted so many biographers, and the story of the siblings' short existences and premature deaths has been told many a time. Where Lyndall Gordon's account differs from these is in exploring Charlotte's life from a more feminist viewpoint than that of the apparently downtrodden novelist, who in the words of her contemporary and first biographer Mrs Gaskell was ''a valiant woman made perfect by sufferings''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084728</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Thomas Wright
|title=Oscar's Books
|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Oscar Wilde, so the introduction tells us, devoured and luxuriated in books. He had a lifelong thirst for reading, and his house was (obviously) packed with them. It comes as no surprise to find out that he was an accomplished speed reader with a remarkable – and to some extent photographic – memory which helped him to absorb and recall instantly vast amounts of prose and verse. As a reviewer for ''Pall Mall Gazette'', he could master a book's content, plot or argument in minutes. We think he would have been the ideal patron saint of Bookbag.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701180617</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Laura Thompson
|title=Agatha Christie: An English Mystery
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Agatha Christie, the creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, was one of the select few ultra-successful, very prolific authors who became an institution within her lifetime. She was much read, widely adapted for television, cinema and stage, and often criticised for her sometimes formulaic plots as well as eagerly sought-after by those who had loved her earlier books and were always eager for the next 'Christie for Christmas', something her publishers did not hesitate to exploit.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755314883</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Yuan-Tsung Chen
|title=Return to the Middle Kingdom
|rating=3.5
|genre=History
|summary=Yuan-Tsung Chen's family have lived through momentous times in China and been as close to what was happening as any one family could be. Chen Guixin, born in 1830 in the time of the Manchu government and just before the beginning of the Opium Wars was her husband's grandfather. He was a part of the Taiping Rebellion but it was his son, Chen Youren who was hailed as a hero when he marched into two former British concessions and reclaimed the land for China. He was the first foreign minister of modern China to have taken back land from the colonial powers. The author married Chen Youren's son, the journalist and artist Jack Chen, who was arrested by the Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution and who later continued his work in the USA.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1402761848</amazonuk>
}}