Secondhand Literary Biography Books

'A guide to the mind of one of the great English novelists of the last half-century' Guardian'Like hearing the voice of an old friend' Observer'Extraordinary . . . a quality...

In December 1991, Allende's daughter Paula, aged 28 fell gravely ill and sank into a coma. This book started as a letter to Paula written during the hours spent at...

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDLonglisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fictionHow do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol -...

The Boy Behind the Curtain is a portrait of a life, a place and a man. In this deeply personal collection of true stories and essays Tim Winton shows how...

In this memoir of his childhood, O'Driscoll eloquently examines his troubled relationship with his father, whose bullying and mental abuse have affected him profoundly throughout his life. The task the...

A powerful, personal agenda-changing exploration of poverty in today's Britain.'One of the most important books of the year' Guardian'When every day of your life you have been told you have...

More than a memoir, My Crazy Century explores the ways in which the epoch and its dominating totalitarian ideologies impacted the lives, character, and morality of Klima's generation. Klima's story...

From the author of the international bestseller Sweetbitter, a memoir of survival, starting over, and love in all its complicated guises. Even after achieving her dream of selling her debut...

Over 15 years ago, The Big Issue began to ask well-known figures from the worlds of entertainment, politics, literature, business and more, one simple question:If you could write a letter...

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...

Hailed by Virginia Woolf and many others as the all-time great letter writer, Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of Thomas Carlyle, is not as well known today as she should be....

The father fled East Prussia to escape the 1880s pogroms and, as a penniless immigrant boy, hawked newspapers on the streets of Chicago. The son, who lives on Philadelphia's Main...

In spring 2004, Susan Sontag was diagnosed with the incurable blood cancer. She had a huge appetite for experience, and a wild, extravagant desire to live. Rieff writes movingly about...

'Absolutely exquisite . . . a contemporary classic' Dave Eggers'Death in Venice with more sex, more booze, more action.' FTBBC Radio 4 Book of the WeekOstend, 1936: the Belgian seaside...

Bruce Chatwin's death in 1989 brought a meteoric career to an abrupt end, since he burst onto the literary scene in 1977 with his first book, In Patagonia.Chatwin himself was...

The work of the poet Peter Redgrove is one of the great unexplored treasures of late twentieth century literature. His prolific output presents an intriguing variety of personae: magician, scientist,...

He has written a masterful biography, rich in enlivened critical detail, which more than any other study of Waugh to date, works to redress the bias against its subject that...

Conrad's impact has been so profound and far-reaching that, eighty years after his death, he remains an essential cultural reference point. Such phrases as "heart of darkness" and "The horror!...

*The Sunday Times bestseller* 'Funny, intimate and honest' Louis Theroux 'Moving and funny. I absolutely loved it' Claudia Winkleman 'Heartbreaking, hilarious, comforting' Marie Claire Dear 2020 - can we just...

Married at sixteen to a man twenty years her senior who spoke no English, she was taken to his ancestral home and estate where she found herself living in the...

'Spike Milligan: His Part in Our Lives' is a unique insight into the late Spike Milligan, one of Britain's best-loved comedians. Containing contributions from his many friends and colleagues, it...

'Heart-wrenching, heart-warming and heartfelt - Mother Ship is a beautifully crafted, warts-and-all love letter to our wonderful NHS' Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt'Our greatest gift to...

Intimacies with Marlowe, entanglements in London with the mysterious dark lady, the probable fathering of an illegitimate son -- the mysteries of Shakespeare's personal life have proven tantalisingly obscure. In...

An exuberant biography of the life of the iconic photographer and naturalist Peter Beard, whose life and work captured the cultural imagination Peter Beard lived an astonishing life. The artist,...

Autobiography of Mark Twain READER'S EDITION Now Available! Half the Size, All the Twain! ISBN 978052027255 "I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And...

*A NEW STATESMAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR**WINNER OF THE TONY LOTHIAN PRIZE*'Interesting women have secrets. They also ought to have sisters.'From the beginning of their lives, the...

Authoritative biography of cult writer and author of NAKED LUNCH, William Burroughs (1914-1997).It has been 50 years since Norman Mailer asserted, 'I think that William Burroughs is the only American...

The definitive biography of Soviet Jewish dissident writer Vasily Grossman, called "gripping" and "fascinating" by William Taubman in the New York Times "[Popoff] tells Grossman's story with sensitivity and a...

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...

During the US book tour for his memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens collapsed in his New York hotel room to excoriating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later...

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...

This captivating novel evolves like a detective story, as a family member airbrushed out of history sets out to uncover the well-kept secrets of the three Boleyn women: Why was...