Secondhand Biographies

Andrew Collins was born 37 years ago in Northampton. His parents never split up, in fact they rarely exchanged a cross word. No-one abused him. Nobody died. He got on...

'Higher education comes at exactly the right time: in the twilight of your teens, you're just starting to coagulate as a human being, to pull away from parental influence and...

Fast approaching his fortieth birthday, Andrew is cornered at a family gathering by the nine-year-old son of his brother-in-law's sister. Having seen him as a talking head on TV, the...

In the brilliant AWKWARD SITUATIONS FOR MEN, Danny Wallace entertained us with wonderfully funny true stories from his often embarrassing and bewildering everyday life as a man.Well, Danny is back...

'A joy to read' Daily TelegraphAlexandra Heminsley thought she could swim. She really did. It may have been because she could run. It may have been because she wanted to...

At the time of his death from cancer on 1 March 2001, journalist and broadcaster John Diamond had completed six chapters of what was to be "an uncomplimentary look at...

Mary Wesley published her first novel at seventy and went on to write a further nine bestsellers, including the legendary The Camomile Lawn, in a style best described as arsenic...

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**'Flawless... Poetic... Superbly portrayed... [Faulks's] feat of imagination...is phenomenal' Daily TelegraphChristopher Wood, a beautiful young Englishman, decided to be the greatest painter the world had seen. He...

'Once upon a time there was a father who, because he had grown old, called together his sons and daughters - four, five, six, eight in number - and finally...

'As I left the round pen, I saw the Queen, Prince Philip, and the Queen Mother rise from their seats to come down and join me . . . With...

David Bellamy is a natural story teller whose memoir is packed full of funny anecdotes and observations. He depicts wonderfully a childhood of discovery and adventure growing up in Carshalton...

Sick of reality TV, scriptwriter Jane Bussmann (South Park, The Fast Show, Brass Eye and Smack the Pony) moved to Hollywood to do something better. But stranded outside the system,...

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, longtime New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water. Good Samaritan Abdulrahman has stayed...

The almost universal conception is that the life of Princess Margaret (1930-2002) was a tragic failure, a history of unfulfilment. Tim Heald's vivid and elegant biography portrays a woman who...

'I don't remember seeing a flash. I didn't hear the blast -- I was too close. Like a distorted film, my vision stretched and turned yellow. I was just three...

In the late 1980s, when she began keeping a diary, Edwina Currie was the second most prominent woman in British politics - after Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, she was often spoken...

The astonishing reality of living without our most important resource: money.'An inspiring and entertaining guide to escaping the money trap and reconnecting with reality.' Paul Kingsnorth, author of Real EnglandImagine...

In this paperback of her long-awaited sequel, we find Karr once again trying to run from the thrills and terrors of her psychological and physical awakening by violently crashing up...

Sir Walter Raleigh is well-know as an explorer, pirate, lover, poet, courtier, philosopher and political prisoner, a man of timeless fascination. An essential part of the nation's history he embodies...

FEAR OF FIFTY is an incendiary book, more controversial and more personal than anything Jong has previously written - this is the real story behind her life, the truth behind...

Born in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, the eighty-five years of Eric Hobsbawm's life are backdropped by an endless litany of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. He has led...

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, LONG WALK TO FREEDOM brilliantly recreates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny....

Separated from her brother Bryan, and passed from caretaker to caretaker, Jenny discovers -- as she rebels her way through high school and into adulthood -- that the past can...

This informative and entertaining look at our past and present explores the pleasantries, pardons, interrogations and arguments that have passed between the likes of Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, Lew...

On 17 April 1986 John McCarthy was kidnapped in Beirut. For the next five years he was cut off from everything and everybody he knew and loved, from family, friends,...

Part of the ever popular SAS and special forces book market. 'A gripping read, it is full of action, exotic locations and haunting images' -The Scotsman A surprisingly humble and...

In the 1960s Charlie Richardson's "manor" was a profitable empire stretching from South London scrapyards and West End drinking clubs to mining in South Africa. Then, on the brink of...

John Sergeant's acclaimed memoir takes us from his somewhat eccentric childhood to his thirty years' service with the BBC. Memorably handbagged by Margaret Thatcher on the steps of the Paris...

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother is made up of the stories of Chinese mothers whose daughters have been wrenched from them, and also brings us the voices of some...

In 1989, driven by a dream and by the memory of her own past, Christina Noble travelled to Vietnam and, against the odds, opened the Christina Noble Children's Foundation, a...

While in rehab, James Frey finds a father figure in a shady mafia boss called Leonard. When Leonard returns to his dubious, prosperous life in the criminal underworld of Las...

In 1956, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, youngest of the six Mitford sisters, invited the writer and war hero Patrick Leigh Fermor to visit Lismore Castle, in Ireland. This halcyon stay...