Secondhand Biographies

Peter Popham's major new biography of Aung San Suu Kyi draws upon previously untapped testimony and fresh revelations to tell the story of a woman whose bravery and determination have...

The Skeleton Cupboard is Professor Tanya Byron's account of her years of training as a clinical psychologist, when trainees find themselves in the toughest placements of their careers. Through the...

Latifa was born into an educated middle-class Afghan family in Kabul in 1980. She dreamed of one day of becoming a journalist, she was interested in fashion, movies and friends....

Campbell Armstrong met his first wife Eileen in Glasgow when they were both young. She was Jewish, the only daughter of an Orthodox family. When they married, Eileen showed Campbell...

First published in 1993, Blake Morrison's And When Did You Last See Your Father? is an extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement. It became a best-seller and...

Lizzie, the eldest, was trapped in post-Civil War Richmond. Irene was the flirtatious and golden Southern belle. Nancy, an unpredictable, elemental force, conquered Edwardian society in England and was the...

Buzbee celebrates the unique experience of the bookstore - the smell and touch of books, getting lost in the deep canyons of shelves, the silent community of readers - sharing...

This is a loving and funny account of life in a mountain village in the Catalan Pyranees and of Bernard and Mary Loughlins' efforts to restore an ancient house there....

Dawn French is one of the greatest comedy actresses of our time, with a career that has spanned nearly three decades, encompassing a vast and brilliant array of characters. Loved...

From the author of the phenomenal Sunday Times bestsellers 'One Child' and 'Ghost Girl', comes a startling and poignant memoir of three people's victimisation and abuse - and their heartbreaking...

This is an extraordinary account of one man's experiences of mental illness and institutions: a rare insight into a hidden world.John O'Donoghue was first admitted to Claybury asylum with manic...

From the Sunday Times bestselling author Dr Amanda Brown. Insights into the world of a Prison Doctor, this time taking us deeper into the walls of Bronzefield, the UK's biggest...

'I immersed myself in magic. I read every book I could get my hands on and practised and practised, day after day and night after night. Magic became my world...some...

Avoiding shellfish was easy. The stoning of adulterers proved a little more difficult - and potentially controversial. Was it enough to walk up to an adulterer and gently touch them...

What makes one of the most gifted, charismatic and successful literary agents in New York fall into full-blown crack-addiction: a collapse that would cost him his business, his home, many...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2015LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'A superb portrait of twentieth century Germany seen through the prism of a...

This lost world, visited fleetingly in "A Postillion Struck by Lightning", the first volume of Dirk Bogarde's autobiography, is seen here through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy. With sensitivity...

Dave Pelzer's bestselling autobiographical trilogy are an international phenomenon. Distressing, heartbreaking and yet inspirational, the fourth in the series guarantees the same level of success.His next book centres on his...

A combination of straightforward autobiography - his family background, education and career - and an account of the election campaign of 1989 when Yeltsin stood as a candidate for the...

Everyone knows that Lord Sugar has strong opinions and is not afraid to voice them - no matter how controversial they may be. His bestselling autobiography revealed his incredible rags...

NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017Most politicians write autobiographies to 'set the record straight' and provide retrospective justification for their careers. That is not the case with this book....

Coventry, 1976. For a brief, blazing summer, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had the chance to be normal. He blew it. While other teenagers concentrated on being coolly rebellious, Mark - like...

The first-person account of a 26-year-old who fought in the war in Sierra Leone as a 12-year-old boy. 'My new friends have begun to suspect that I haven't told them...

'I was born on 31 January 1979 - a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, becasue the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like...

Alexei Sayle was born in Liverpool on the day egg rationing came to an end. His family ate salad. They read the Soviet Weekly. They travelled on transcontinental trains, and...

`A gripping detective story, a stirring epic, a tale of ghosts and dark marvels, a thrilling display of scholarship, a meditation on the unfathomable mystery of good and evil, "The...

John Bayley's account of his long and loving marriage to the great novelist Iris Murdoch takes us on a journey, from their love affair's comically inauspicious beginnings in the Oxford...

Hyok Kang was eighteen when he escaped from North Korea, a country locked away from the outside world. This personal, illustrated account of school days in a rigidly communist institution...

For the first six years of her life, Sarah Harris was a happy and popular little girl. Until she became the target of a dangerous but invisible enemy - and...

Food - meals eaten together in many different places and circumstances - is the common thread of this book whose underlying idea is that the family at the table is...

A biography of Tony Blair, the leader of the Labour party, which is also an account of the modernization of his party. Tony Blair attended his first branch meeting of...