Secondhand Biographies

WINNER OF SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS FOR DEBUT NON-FICTION'A bold new voice' IRISH TIMES'Visceral . . . I could feel every word' ANGELA HUI'Thoughtful, poetic and clear-sighted' CECILE PINThe orange...

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....

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'With brutal, beautiful honesty, Clover articulates how bereavement shocks and dislocates - and in all the pain, there's SO much life.' MARIAN KEYES'MUST READ ... A...

THE HILARIOUS NEW BOOK FROM ONE OF BRITAIN'S BEST-LOVED NATIONAL TREASURES!This is not a book of life lessons. But Freddie Flintoff has had a moment to reflect and he's noticed...

For most people giving up the day job and moving to a beautiful area of France and living off the vines is an impossible but delicious dream. In 1990, Patricia...

Winifred Fortescue was born in Suffolk in 1888. At the age of 17 she decided to help the family's ailing resources by taking a career on the stage, and starred...

'One of the most moving books of the new year' STYLIST'Gorgeous and unsettling' NEW YORK TIMES'Brilliant and devastating...tender and lacerating' PANDORA SYKES'One of the literary world's most promising new voices'...

Fashion model, UN ambassador and courageous spirit, Waris Dirie was born into a family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia. She told her story - enduring female circumcision at five...

Tom Pocock presents a complete and completely believable Nelson. . It is unlikely that another could have handled Nelson with the confidence and fluency, the combination of detachment and intimacy,...

Rochester has the reputation as the archetypal 17th-century rake and with good reason. When Charles II returned to England in 1660, Rochester was at Wadham College, Oxford. Charles' restoration inspired...

Always a contradictory figure, Gloria Steinem has been both hailed and vilified as the "acceptable" face of feminism. Not until her political engagement found active voice through the "New York"...

'Intensely readable, poetic, truthful, wise and wonderful.' STEPHEN FRY'An extraordinary book.' SUNDAY TIMESStruggling to comprehend the shocking death of his teenage daughter, Ben Goldsmith finds solace in nature by immersing...

Collette Wolfe was on holidays in Lanzarote with her husband Anthony when they got the call that all parents most dread. Their beloved daughter Leanne had died, having taken her...

'The noises were fuzzy in the darkness. Like hearing a domestic dispute through an apartment wall. As a cop, it was a scenario I'd experienced many times as I'd approached...

In April 2009, a modest middle-aged woman from a village in Scotland was catapulted to global fame when the YouTube video of her audition for "Britain's Got Talent" touched the...

Shirin-Gol was just a young girl when her village was levelled by the Russians' bombs in 1979. After the men in her family joined the resistance, she fled with the...

From her father, Danielle Trussoni learned the importance of rock and roll, how to avoid the cops and never to shy away from a fight. Growing up, she was fascinated...

At the record-breaking age of 28 Piers Morgan was made editor of the News of the World, the UK's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper. The decade that followed was one of the...

For ten hair-raising years, Andrew Graham-Yooll was the news editor of the Buenos Aires Herald. All around him friends and acquaintances were "disappearing". Although the slightest mistake might have caused...