Literary Biography

Laure Adler contacted Marguerite Duras in the 1970s after finding consolation from one of her novels after the death of her child, and they became friends. Years later, she became...

It is 1964 and Maya Angelou is on her way back home, leaving behind her beloved - and now seriously teenaged - son Guy, to finish university in Ghana. America...

Written with a mixture of memoir and dramatic stories, this text is an exploration into what it means to be a wife, particularly a "good wife", then and now, looked...

John Keats died at an early age, leaving what have become some of the best-known English poems, such as "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode to a Grecian Urn", "Ode to...

The 19th-century explorer Richard Burton was a blend of erudite scholar and daring adventurer. Fluent in 29 languages, he found it easy to pass himself off as a native, thereby...

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was one of the most glamorous international publishers of his generation, yet he died violently, as a member of an ultra-left group attempting to blow up an electricity...

A brilliant and feared critic, Kenneth Tynan was a nabob of the National Theatre alongside Laurence Olivier, and he was also the daring impresario who created "Oh Calcutta". He was...

Witty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day. She published "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"; travelled to revolutionary France and...

Many know the public Yeats but few have managed to penetrate to the inner man, or to explore the relationship with his much younger wife, George. Here Brenda Maddox brings...

Maya Angelou's five volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman...

Maya Angelou's six volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman...

Clinging to the Wreckage - the first part of John Mortimer's hilarious and moving autobiography'A true masterpiece of the genre' The TimesHere John Mortimer recounts his solitary childhood in the...

Samuel Beckett, whose play Waiting for Godot was one of the most influential works for the post-World War II generation, has long been identified with the debilitated and impotent characters...

A deluded mother who invented her past, an alcoholic father who couldn't deal with the present, a son who wondered if this could really be his family. Richard Glover's favourite...

Alan Bennett's A Life Like Other People's is a poignant family memoir offering a portrait of his parents' marriage and recalling his Leeds childhood, Christmases with Grandma Peel, and the...

A Guardian Book of the YearAn Evening Standard Book of the YearAn Independent Book of the Year Netgalley's non-fiction Book of the YearA national treasure's journey to the brink and...

A The Times & Sunday Times Book of the Year'Fascinating... Wonderfully entertaining and absorbing' Sunday Times'Gripping... A story well told.' New York Times Book ReviewFinalist for the Pulitzer Prize for...

Ireland's greatest poet, William Butler Yeats, was also perhaps the outstanding poet to have written in English since Wordsworth.Many of his early poems - wistful, mysterious and suffused with Pre-Raphaelite...

In Uncle Tungsten Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow...

The authoritative biography of Truman Capote, a bestseller when originally published on both sides of the Atlantic.

A Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller As one of the best biographers of her generation, Claire Tomalin has written about great novelists and poets to huge success: now, she turns...

One May night in 1922, in a grand hotel in Paris, five of the greatest artists of the 20th century sat down to supper. It would be the only time...

*THE NO.3 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* 'Raw, compelling, wise and tender' Dolly Alderton'Motherwell is razor-sharp, fearless and wonderful' Adam Kay'Utterly candid and staggeringly good, both as the history of a woman...

Autobiographical and idiosyncratic, this is a collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings, assembled by Bennett himself from 25 years of diaries, reminiscences, broadcasting and reviews. It includes his address at...

This roman-a-clef is about a drunken young journalist. It is Hunter S. Thompson's only work of fiction.

He is perhaps the most acclaimed, revered and widely read writer of our time, and in this first volume of a planned trilogy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez begins to tell the...

In this award-winning biography, Brenda Maddox gives us a completely new view of D. H. Lawrence - not the bearded prophet with baleful eye, but a likeable Lawrence: hilarious mimic,...

Shelley And His World is the acclaimed biography by bestselling author Claire Tomalin'It is intensely alive, intelligent, responsive and informative at every point' London Review of Books'She writes from the...

'I seem to have banged on this year rather more than usual. I make no apology for that, nor am I nervous that it will it make a jot of...

With an Introduction by Dr Angus Calder.The 22-year old James Boswell first met Johnson, who was then aged 54, in 1763. Nine years later he wrote in his journal of...

Autobiographical and idiosyncratic, this is a collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings, assembled by Bennett himself from over a quarter of a century of diaries, reminiscences, broadcasting and reviews. It...

Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all...