Biography
The Bard: Robert Burns - a biography by Robert Crawford
If Shakespeare is England's own Bard, the comparatively shortlived Robert Burns – who lived and worked nearly two centuries later – fulfils the equivalent role in Scottish iconography more than adequately. Yet as this very thorough biography demonstrates, there is much more to the man than the wordsmith of 'Auld Lang Syne' and 'Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie'. Full review...
Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr by Linda Porter
Katherine Parr was the last and arguably the most fortunate of King Henry VIII's six wives. Apart from Anne of Cleves, the speedily divorced 'Flanders mare', she was the only one to survive him. And while all six of the queens consort remain rather shadowy figures, this biography gives the impression that she was probably the most intelligent and well-rounded personality of them all. Full review...
The Richard Beckinsale Story by David Clayton
A generation probably knows Richard Beckinsale only from repeats on the UK Gold TV channels, and from occasional mentions in the context of 'how great he would have been if only…' In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped the 30-year-old sitcom favourite as a rising major star of the 80s who would blossom into one of the great all-round stage actors. One year later, he was dead. Full review...
Sons, Servants and Statesmen: The Men in Queen Victoria's Life by John Van der Kiste
Like the first Elizabeth more books than are strictly necessary have been written about Queen Victoria, but John Van der Kiste has taken the unusual step of using the men in her life to illuminate some dark corners which might other wise have remained unexplored. Of course the most famous man in her life, husband and Prince Consort Albert isn't 'son, servant or statesman' as promised by the title of the book, but he established a trend. Victoria, often regarded as a difficult woman to please, would always have a man in her life who would, to a greater or lesser extent, dominate her. Full review...
Escape to Provence by Maureen Emerson
In the 1920s two women, one American, one British, settled in the south of France, both for different reasons. Elisabeth Starr had left her home in Philadelphia after an unhappy childhood and the death, possibly suicide, of her fiancé, a nephew of the American President. Drawn to Paris, 'the chosen European city for the sophisticated and well-heeled of the New World', she worked as a nurse during the Great War, then moved to Provence where she made her home in an ancient stone house, the Castello, and took French citizenship. Winifred (Peggy) Fortescue was the wife of the Royal Librarian at Windsor, who retired in 1926 with a knighthood and became a renowned (though hardly successful in financial terms) military historian. After the fall of the pound, it was hard for them to make ends meet in England, and they were drawn to find a property in Provence partly by the lifestyle, partly by a favourable exchange rate. Full review...
Daisy: The Lives and Loves of the Countess of Warwick by Sushila Anand
Born Daisy Maynard in 1861, the Countess of Warwick lived a colourful life by any standards. She was notoriously promiscuous, a spendthrift who did not hesitate to try and provoke a royal scandal to shore up her parlous finances, and although she relished her lifestyle to the full, she spent several years fighting wholeheartedly for the pioneer socialists in Britain. Full review...
The Blind Side by Michael Lewis
I think my husband was a little taken aback to see me curled up on the sofa engrossed in a book about American Football. I suppose I should admit that I didn't actually know it was going to be about American Football. Well, I knew it was about a boy who played American Football, but I'd thought that was just going to be the background story, you know, like in Jerry Maguire. So the first chapter seemed to go on and on forever, and I thought my head might pop from reading about quarterbacks and blind sides and plays and offence and defence and running statistics...but then somehow I stumbled to the real heart of the story; the story of Michael Oher, a young African-American from the slums of Memphis whose father was never around, and whose mother was a drug addict and lost him to social services at a young age. Full review...
Tommy's World by Billy Hopkins
Tommy Hopkins was born in October 1886 in Collyhurst, one of the poorer, inner-city suburbs of Manchester. His father had quite a good job and there wasn't a lot of money to spare but Tommy remembered the home as being filled with love and laughter. He was an only child but thought that he was spoilt in terms of affection rather than in the form of worldly goods. All that was to change when his father died of spinal meningitis and he and his mother had to move into cheaper lodgings. Even that tenuous security wasn't to last for long – his mother died of a heart attack in her thirties, leaving Tommy an orphan before he was eight years old. Full review...
Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man by Claire Tomalin
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. Full review...
The Madness of Queen Maria: The Remarkable Life of Maria I of Portugal by Jenifer Roberts
Born in 1734 in Lisbon, at that time the richest and most opulent city in Europe, Maria was destined to become the first female monarch in Portuguese history. Married to her uncle Infante Pedro, seventeen years her senior, she had six children (outliving all but one of them), and became Queen in 1777. A conscientious woman, she had the misfortune to be born in during the 'age of reason', when church and state were vying for supremacy. Instinctively a supporter of the old religion, with a humanitarian approach to state affairs, she was no Queen Elizabeth, no Catherine the Great, and wore her crown rather reluctantly. Full review...
Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-Thomas by Graham McCann
When I was in my early teens, it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five-star British comedy film around. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grin, cigarette holder and inimitable 'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best of all, the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!' Full review...
A Royal Affair: George III and His Troublesome Siblings by Stella Tillyard
King George III was not the luckiest of English sovereigns. America, and then his sons, in that order, gave him no end of grief, and the last few years of his life were clouded by madness. It is thus often overlooked that, before these troubles arose to haunt this most conscientious monarch, he also had a thankless task in trying to control his siblings. Full review...
Elizabeth's Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen by Tracy Borman
So many biographies have been written about the life and times of England's longest-lived and longest reigning sovereign that one might wonder whether there is anything new left to say about her. However Tracy Borman has found an interesting new angle – by telling the story of her life through the women closest to her. Full review...
Me Cheeta by James Lever
Straight out of the golden age of Hollywood comes the bitchiest, most revealing memoir from one of its stars. There are scores to be settled, stars to be insulted, secrets to be hinted at none too subtley, and lost opportunities to be longed for. Oh, and the star telling all? Well, for those of you who can't tell from the title (or even the picture on the front cover) it's Cheeta - chimpanzee star of the Tarzan films. Full review...
Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King by Philippe Auclair
Even though I'm not a Manchester United fan, Eric Cantona is one of my all time favourite players and I was really excited to get the opportunity to read a book which was billed as revealing his innermost thoughts, and being the definitive account of his career. Full review...
Close to Holmes: A Look at the Connections Between Historical London, Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Alistair Duncan
Even today, London is a remarkable compromise of the old and the new. As Alistair Duncan shows in this volume, the city of Conan Doyle and Holmes has changed – yet not changed. There have been a handful of books in the past on 'Holmes's London', but this is the first of its kind to place equal emphasis on places associated with the detective and his creator. Full review...
Bobbles & Plum: Four Satirical Playlets by Bertram Fletcher Robinson and PG Wodehouse by Paul R Spiring (Editor)
P.G. Wodehouse needs little if any introduction, but Bertram Fletcher Robinson's life and career were cut short and he is little known outside his connections with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This set of satirical playlets on which they collaborated, published in journals between 1904 and 1907 and virtually forgotten since, are presented in book form for the first time. As such they show how the careers of both men were evolving, particularly while Wodehouse was finding his feet and experimenting with the different facets of journalism before finding his niche in comic fiction. Full review...
People of the Day 4: The Rich and Famous Caricatured by Peter Wynter Bee and Lucy Clapham
Have you ever been asked to buy a book in aid of a charity and wished that you'd given a donation and not taken the book? Well, if you have I'm hoping to persuade you that there are exceptions to every rule and this book in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust is definitely worth the cover price. Full review...
Idle Thoughts on Jerome K Jerome: A 150th Anniversary Celebration by Jeremy Nicholas
Although he was a prolific novelist, short story writer, dramatist and journalist, Jerome Klapka Jerome will always be remembered first and foremost as the author of Three Men in a Boat. This fascinating anthology, published on the 150th anniversary of his birth, reminds us that there was far more to the man than that one admittedly enduring book. Full review...
Nelson, Hitler and Diana by Richard D Ryder
Was Horatio Nelson, a navy officer of great renown, forever thrusting himself into the limelight, doing it because his mother passed away when he was nine? Was Hitler overly affected by his father dying in a time of paternal disapproval, and a kind of Oedipal reaction to being the man in the house making him suffer when she herself died? And can Diana, Princess of Wales' parents' divorce lead to a claim she was a sufferer of borderline personality disorder? Full review...
Immortal Longings: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian Search for Life After Death by Trevor Hamilton
Born in 1843, Frederic Myers began his career as a classical lecturer at Cambridge University, but disliked teaching and soon gave it up in favour of writing poetry and essays in literature. Although his social circle included men such as Gladstone, Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning and Prince Leopold, the most intellectual of Queen Victoria's sons, his books (which are not so well remembered today) might have been his sole claim to fame, had it not been for his passionate curiosity about the meaning of human life. If it had a purpose, he was convinced, it could only be discovered through the study of human experiences. Full review...
The World of Vanity Fair - Bertram Fletcher Robinson by Paul R Spiring (Editor)
Every now and then, you comes across a really sumptuous book, where just turning and looking at the pages takes you into another world.
Such is the case with this one. Vanity Fair was a gentler Victorian forerunner of Private Eye. Subtitled, A Weekly Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares, it appeared between 1868 and 1914. Like the more successful, longer-lasting Punch, it began with radical aspirations, intending to expose what [the editor] perceived to be the vanities of the elite social classes. However its satire was gently humorous rather than malicious, and almost everybody who was portrayed in its pages was flattered. Full review...
Captivated: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers and the Dark Side of Neverland by Piers Dudgeon
According to D.H. Lawrence, J.M. Barrie has a fatal touch for those he loves. They die.
Barrie had an extraordinary fascination with a childlike world of innocence and young boys who never grew up. Had it merely stopped at creating Peter Pan, all well and good. Unfortunately this obsession manifested itself in an unhealthy involvement with others, notably the du Maurier family. Full review...
How Could He Do It? by Emma Charles
Emma Charles was on the edge of thinking that she and her family were doing quite well. They were an ordinary family – mum, dad, two daughters, three dogs, a rabbit and a couple of guinea pigs. Sprinkle in an Open University course for Mum, private schooling for the girls, a nice car in the drive of the nice house, good clothes and fun holidays – and you can understand why she might be rather pleased with the way that life was going.
Then her fifteen year old daughter, Tamsin, gave her a note, couched in graphic terms, saying that her father had been sexually abusing her for the past five years. In moments the family's life fell apart. Gone were all the certainties, the hopes and the expectations. In came the police, Social Services and Child Protection Officers. Full review...
Pilgrim State by Jacqueline Walker
I was intrigued and touched by Jacqueline Walker's beautiful memoir of her childhood in Jamaica and London in the 1960's. This is a book inevitably compared with Andrea Levy's Small Island. It follows similar ground, but the main difference and great strength, is that it's the real narrative of mother and daughter. As a girl I was familiar with areas of London where Jackie Walker lived and heard some members of my family denigrate Caribbean immigrants. From this memoir, I've garnered much about the lived experience of my less advantaged contemporaries. Full review...
Becoming Queen by Kate Williams
It's a story which has been told by many authors during the last century. The Victorian age, or at any rate the woman who gave her name to the era, came about largely if not wholly because of a crisis of sorts among King George III's family. By the time his seven surviving sons reached middle age, they had managed to produce one legitimate child between them, namely Princess Charlotte. Her unexpected death, and the need for at least some if not all of the others to do their dynastic duty and produce an heir or two, resulted in an undignified mass scramble to the altar. Edward, Duke of Kent won the lottery. It was he and his wife, a widow with two small children by her first marriage, whose daughter Victoria became the saviour of the royal succession. Full review...
The Queen's Knight by Martyn Downer
The title sounds more indicative of a novel by Dorothy Dunnett or Jean Plaidy than a biography. Then a brief prologue starts the story at the very end, when Queen Victoria receives the unexpected news of the death of Sir Howard Elphinstone. An equally short first chapter gives us a glimpse of the man some thirty years earlier in the thick of battle at the Crimea. Only after that do we 'reach' his birth in 1829. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and it's a good way of introducing this very interesting life. As the husband of his subject's great-great-granddaughter, the author is well qualified to write it. Full review...
Anecdotes of George Frederick Handel and John Christopher Smith by William Coxe and Peter Danckwerts (Editor)
Written by the stepson of John Christopher Smith (a friend of Handel and composer in his own right), Anecdotes is an overview of two men who in their own ways were remarkable. Handel, of course, was a musical genius while Smith was a man of great kindness — a good friend of Coxe's father, he married his widow to ensure she and her children would be cared for. Full review...
Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits by Barney Hoskyns
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Tom Waits probably enjoys a status comparable to the UK's Richard Thompson. He has never sold out to a mass pop audience, preferring instead to sustain an engagingly low-key career for over 30 years, feted by critics, fellow artists and a cult following while only achieving modest record sales. While his 80s albums 'Swordfishtrombones' and 'Rain Dogs' are regarded as among the finest of the decade, most of his royalties have come through cover versions of his songs. Two, 'Downtown Train' and 'Tom Traubert's Blues', have been Top 10 hits for Rod Stewart, who once said that they paid for the swimming pool in Tom's garden, while in his early days the Eagles gave him a boost by recording 'Ol' 55' on their third album. Full review...
The Life of Handel by Victor Schoelcher (Author), Anton de Moresco (Editor), James Lowe (Translator)
Although he is probably best remembered for his active role in the abolition of slavery in the French colonies, and as a campaigner for women's rights, Victor Schoelcher was also a noted musicologist. His biography of the composer Handel, first published in 1857, was one of the first scholarly works on the subject, and at the time it was generally regarded as one of the finest portraits of a musician or composer ever written. Full review...
Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution by Iain McCalman
A look at Darwin's journey on The Beagle, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it. Full review...
The Bolter by Frances Osborne
Life in London just after the Great War must have been jolly, even frightfully good fun, what – for the right (or the wrong?) people. The early 1920s were the years of the bright young things, the men who had been lucky enough to return from the fighting still in one piece, determined to make up for years of tedium in the trenches by whooping it up with the equally pleasure-loving gals barely out of their teens, just as willing to throw morals and discretion to the winds and party round the clock. This was the age when women thought nothing of receiving invited company while in the bath and slowly getting dressed in front of them. One hostess even greeted her guests walking down the staircase of her Belgrave Square mansion wearing a string of the family pearls – and nothing else. Full review...
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
This hefty tome, the cover tells us, is 'the book that inspired Barack Obama'. For what it's worth, Obama's name appears no less than nine times on the cover and spine, while Lincoln's appears only six, and that of the author a mere two. Full review...
Darwin: A Life in Science by John Gribbin and Michael White
This straightforward and likeable biography of Charles Darwin charts the evolution of his theories of evolution, while providing solid insights into the man in the context of his upbringing, education and family life. Importantly, it makes you want to read On the Origin of the Species, acting as a primer for the ideas introduced in that famous volume.
Darwin: A Life in Science is pitched beautifully for the reader of popular science, yet gives plenty of signposts enabling future study. It also gives a very believable picture of Darwin, based on convincing evidence and without falling into florid psychological speculation. Full review...
The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos by Michael D Lemonick
No-one can ever look at the night skies above our heads as Galileo did. The light pollution covering so much of our planet makes it impossible to see nearly as much as he might. Conversely, he would have adored living in a time such as ours – with the technology to show him so much he couldn't see, so much he daren't dream of. Sitting happily between those two extremes was William Herschel. Full review...
The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon by David Grann
For Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett there was more to the Amazonian jungle than El Dorado. His target was a treasure of a different nature – a lost city to be discovered because it was a city, not for any spurious material wealth it might hold. Could an entire civilisation have been founded in the inhospitable tracks of rain forest, and left remains he might find fame in locating? As this brilliant biography shows, Fawcett was the best man around to find it. Full review...
People of the Day 3: The Rich and Famous Caricatured by Peter Wynter Bee and Lucy Clapham
I often find myself paying money for books where the profits go to charity and I'm usually left with the feeling that I'd much rather someone had simply asked me for a donation and not wasted the paper. Every once in a while a book comes along which proves me wrong and there's only one way to describe the People of the Day series. The books are a delight and it's all in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Full review...
Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson
Louisa May Alcott and her father, Amos Bronson, shared the same birthday, she being born on 29 November 1832, his thirty-third. Throughout their lives, father and daughter remained extraordinarily close, and even almost died together. When he finally succumbed after a stroke and long-drawn out illness on 4 March 1888, she was too ill to be told and followed him two days later. Between them, they saw life as 'a persistent but failed quest for perfection', regarding themselves in their vain pursuit of paradise on earth as Eden's outcasts, hence the title of this dual biography. Full review...
Paki Harrison: Tohunga Whakairo : the Story of a Master Carver by Ranginui Walker
It was an inspired choice that Ranginui Walker was commissioned to write this book. He successfully places the extraordinary character of master carver Paki Harrison into an historical, cultural, academic and political context, whilst never letting us forget that this almost mythical genius is very much a man with his personal conflicts, successes and devotion. Full review...
Over the Wide and Trackless Sea: the Pioneer Women and Girls of New Zealand by Megan Hutching
This book offers a valuable insight into the lives of twelve pioneer women who suffered, endured and triumphed in New Zealand.
Their journey by boat from Europe to New Zealand was a long and sometimes perilous one. The European explorers had previously been certain that their destination existed, mainly because they abhorred a vacuum, and couldn't believe there could be such a vast expanse of ocean without the existence of a great land. Some also believed that without a land mass south of the Tropic of Capricorn, the world would be tipped upside down, while others were fearful they would burn up whilst crossing the equator, a myth finally dispelled by the Portuguese voyaging around Africa. Full review...
Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime by Joanne Drayton
Joanne Drayton successfully introduces us to the reclusive Ngaio Marsh, her extraordinary success, and her love for the theatre, the arts, her friends and the country she loved and would always call home. Full review...
Wind Driven: Barbara Kendall's Story by Wendy Kendall
Barbara Kendell is an extraordinary woman. She has not only won windsurfing medals at three Olympics, she is a mother, an IOC representative, public speaker and mentor. This biography, written by her sister, tells the inspiring story of an extraordinary woman who overcame her personal challenges and remains at the top of her sport after twenty years of competition. Full review...
Bertram Fletcher Robinson: A Footnote to The Hound of the Baskervilles by Brian W Pugh and Paul R Spiring
Bertram Fletcher Robinson was a great friend of Arthur Conan Doyle and a prolific writer, who tragically died aged just thirty-six in 1907. His collaboration was crucial to the revival of Sherlock Holmes in ACD's best-known tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles. This volume is described as a 'footnote' to that story and while there is much of value to Sherlock Holmes fans, I got little impression of BFR the man, despite the meticulously recorded details which the authors have painstakingly uncovered. Full review...
The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson
The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments looks at the most elegant, stylish, simple, ground-breaking, thrilling and inspiring experiments throughout history. There's a real feel that this is how science should be done: one person, alone in a room, forming a hypothesis and creating a method to test it. It doubles as a potted biography of some of the greatest scientists ever, but it's more about the experiments themselves than the people. Full review...
Handel: The Man and His Music by Jonathan Keates
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. Full review...