The Observer reports that publishers are seeking out five major music stars who are to write their memoirs,
such was the success of Keith Richards’s book and the life.
‘Call them the Big Five. Game hunters have their wish-list of trophy animals, and rock music has its own – the elite group of rock stars yet to be bagged for publishing deals. This
month, after HarperCollins snapped up the autobiography of Pete Townshend of the Who after a bidding war, publishers’ sights are firmly set on the few remaining major talents to have held back from
a book deal. Paul McCartney, Elton John, Robert Plant and Bruce Springsteen are on that list, but at the top for many in the book industry is David Bowie.
Over the last year, memoirs by members of the Rolling Stones, Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses have reached the bestseller lists. As a result, a further series of stadium names – all
now in their fifties and sixties, some against the odds – have decided to chronicle their lives and times, turning 2011 into the year of the rock memoir. Turning the volume up well beyond 11
with tales of fast living and hard drinking, rockers Patti Smith, Steve Tyler and Sammy Hagar of Van Halen have all been vying for space in the book shops. In Britain, the autobiography of the
slightly younger Shaun Ryder is due to be published later this summer.’
Judy Golding, daughter of William Golding, tells the Telegraph’s ‘Way With Words
Festival’ of her struggle to describe him in her memoir.
“I need to make these two men one . . . the warm, embracing man I adored, and the indifferent, sometimes self-centred, occasionally cruel man, who could drink too much, could be crushing,
contemptuous, defeating, deadening. This is hard. I hesitated hugely and I was bolstered by very good friends, one of whom said to me every few months, ‘Are you going to tell the truth about
your father?’. I know that I come over as quite angry and in a sense you have to be fuelled by a sort of anger. But I certainly don’t regret it.”
Sarah Crompton reviews Peter Snow’s inventive life of the Duke of
Wellington.
‘In his equally riveting book, handily now in paperback, he explains that Wellington’s Peninsula campaign, the battles fought to drive Napoleon’s French armies out of Portugal and Spain,
culminating in the final battle against Napoleon himself, was “the first campaign in history to give rise to a rich tide of eyewitness accounts by those who fought in
it”.
Such stories, as gripping and emotional as they come, form the backbone of Snow’s account. But his achievement lies in being able to switch focus from such fine detail, to the bigger picture
– both describing the progress of the campaign itself and analysing, with the help of clear diagrams, Wellington’s strategy in each battle.’
Comments