Biography
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
No pains spared
Matthew: A Memoir, by Anne Crosby
Challenging Zeus
Titan at the Foreign Office: Gladwyn Jebb and the Shaping of the Modern World, by Sean Greenwood
Perfectly unreliable
Ticks and Crosses: Personal Terms 4, by Frederic Raphael
The life of the heart
Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries from the Love Affair of a Lifetime edited by Victoria Glendinning, with Judith Roberts
Freedom and houghmagandie
The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford
Robert Burns: A Biography, by Patrick Scott Hogg
His own best biographer
Byron in Love, by Edna O’Brien
The misery of an intellectual
Reborn: Susan Sontag, Early Diaries, 1947-1964, edited by David Rieff
Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir, by David Rieff
The Millers’ tale
Arthur Miller, 1915-1962, by Christopher Bigsby
A balancing act
English Catholic Heroes, edited by John Jolliffe
The secrets of Room 40
‘Blinker’ Hall, Spymaster, by David Ramsay
Friends and enemies
The Pursuit of Laughter: Essays, Articles and Reviews, by Diana Mitford, edited by Deborah Devonshire
Humph swings
Last Chorus: An Autobiographical Medley, by Humphrey Lyttleton
Living the legend
My Judy Garland Life, by Susie Boyt
Gruff Justice
James Robertson Justice: What’s the Bleeding Time? by James Hogg, with Robert Sellers and Howard Watson
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