Biography
Lost and found
Making An Elephant: Writing from Within, by Graham Swift
Moving swiftly on
Chaplin’s Girl, by Miranda Seymour
Love Child, by Allegra Huston
Raymond Carr at 90
Dons don’t usually appear to much advantage in fiction.
More than politics
A Fortunate Life, by Paddy Ashdown
Behind the wit
Home to Roost and Other Peckings by Deborah Devonshire, edited by Charlotte Mosley
Exit the hero
The Movement Reconsidered: Larkin, Amis, Gunn, Davie and their Contemporaries, edited by Zachary Leader
Living the pagan idyll
Frances Partridge, by Anne Chisholm
Dilly-dallying romance
Constable in Love, by Martin Gayford
Tales out of school
The Old Boys’ Network, by John Rae
A delicate talent
The Other Elizabeth Taylor, by Nicola Beauman
In a class of his own
Maurice Bowra: A Life, by Leslie Mitchell
A thoroughly good egg
Stanley I Presume, by Stanley Johnson
Lincoln’s legacy
Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Puzzling out the past
The Pattern in the Carpet, by Margaret Drabble
Opposites attracted
Before We Met, by Marcelle and Anthony Quinton
The world of big brother
The Music Room, by William Fiennes
Now universally acknowledged
Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World, by Claire Harman
Old gipsy-man
Dreaming of Babylon: The Life and Times of Ralph Hodgson, by John Harding
The mother’s tale
The Lost Child, by Julie Myerson
Barking up the wrong tree?
The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, by James Lovelock He Knew He Was Right: The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock and Gaia, by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin
Member of the In and Out
A View from the Foothills, by Chris Mullin
Wit and wisdom
The Last Political Law Lord: Lord Sumner, 1859-1934, by Anthony Lentin
Heroes and villains
The Spice of Life, by John Jolliffe
From palace to cowshed
Madame de la Tour du Pin’s Journal d’une Femme de Cinquante Ans, with its vivid descriptions of her experiences during…
More gossip with less art?
The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1929-40, Volume I, edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck