Secondhand Literary Biography Books

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...

Candia McWilliam had just joined the judging panel of the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2006 when she started to lose her sight. The gradual onset of blindness seemed...

An intimate yet frank biography of Gore Vidal, one of the most accomplished, visible and controversial American novelists and cultural figures of the past century. The product of thirty years...

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...

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring - and surviving - an attempt on his life thirty years after the...

'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...

Winner of the Crime Fest HRF Keating Award'Not merely the conclusive homage to a compulsively fascinating character, but an insightful study into the biographical process itself' Nicholas Shakespeare'Now that he...

In this wonderful addition to the Eminent Lives series, widely acclaimed biographer Brenda Maddox sheds a fascinating new light on the life of legendary novelist George Eliot. On 22 November...

Available for the first time and collected in one volume, the letters of one of America's most beloved authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder-a treasure trove that offers new and unexpected understanding...

Alastair Cooke's Letter from America: 1946-2004 is a defining collection from his legendary BBC Radio broadcasts that guides us through nearly sixty years of changing life in the United States....

From ND Stevenson, the New York Times bestselling author-illustrator of Nimona, comes a captivating, honest illustrated memoir that finds him turning an important corner in his creative journey-and inviting readers...

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...

One of the most enduringly popular and controversial writers of the twentieth century, George Orwell's work is as relevant today as it was in his own lifetime. Possibly, in the...

Flamboyant and witty, Oscar Wilde was famous for being famous. The toast of late-nineteenth London society, he once boasted he could speak spontaneously on any subject, and his writings were...

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...

"To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich and happy is surely going against nature." When Joe Orton (1933-1967) wrote those words in his diary in May 1967, he was...

Shortlised for the Saltire Society Non Fiction Book of the Year Award Almost every adult and child is familiar with his Treasure Island, but few know that Robert Louis Stevenson...

'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.' Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on...

Told with Clive James's unassailable sense of humour and self-effacing charm, Unreliable Memoirs is a hilarious and touching introduction to the story of a national treasure. A million-copy bestseller, this...

Arthur Miller's life spans more than four decades and includes three marriages - famously to America's enduring icon, Marilyn Monroe - numerous plays, novels and an autobiography. Martin Gottfried utilizes...

'An absolute gem . . . I was delightfully lost by the river throughout' Paul Whitehouse'Marvellous . . . The Catch leaves both its writer and its reader wonderfully "lost...

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...

The grandson of biologist T. H. Huxley, Aldous Huxley had a privileged background and was educated at Eton and Oxford despite an eye infection that left him nearly blind. Having...

Love, Nina meets Black Books: a wry and hilarious account of life in Scotland's biggest second-hand bookshop and the band of eccentrics and book-obsessives who work there'The Diary Of A...

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...

ECONOMIST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016'A deeply original and illuminating account of Marx's journey through the intellectual history of the nineteenth century... a profound reappraisal and a gripping read' Christopher...

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....

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...

When it was announced that Jane Austen would appear on the new GBP10 note in 2017, few were aware that a GBP10 Austen banknote already existed - issued by her...

'DREAM HOLIDAY READING....I ENJOYED LEAMER'S BOOK A LOT.' SUNDAY TIMES'ABSOLUTELY PERFECT POOLSIDE READING AND I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE MINI-SERIES.' THE TIMES'BARRELING AND WELL-RESEARCHED.' MAIL ON SUNDAY'A JUICY, ENGAGING READ.'...

National Geographic Traveller's the best books on European cities, 2019In the autumn of 1948 Hemingway was approaching fifty and hadn't published a novel in nearly a decade. He travelled for...

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLERLet Dame Judi Dench take you behind the scenes of a life loving the Bard - as she shares her story with, and enduring affection...

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...

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,...

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...

The childhood and early life memoir of Antonia Fraser, one of our finest narrative historians.Antonia Fraser's magical memoir describes growing up in the 1930s and '40s, but its real concern...

The sole and definitive biography of the greatest living American playwright. Arthur Miller has been delivering powerful drama to the stage for decades with such masterpieces as Death of a...

'Before I turn 67 - next March - I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works...