Not so much a sequel to 'The Hare with Amber Eyes', this short, superb and immensely powerful book is nevertheless complementary to his earlier book. Read it, give it, think about it; read i... read more
It should come as no surprise that Beaton's biographer, and author of many other fine books on society subjects, should himself have personal diaries to share with his readers... (Not to be ... read more
Not Oscar (of the 'Ark' or 'List') but a Cafe in Innsbruck.... A vivid portrayal of a family's brushes with history, from the Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the importance of cake.
FSS is an excellent and varied writer. In this new book, she looks at her father's life through the papers in a suitcase revealing how he was exiled from Romania during the war, to Turkey th... read more
Executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, a crime of which she was almost certainly innocent. This is a valuable book on 'The American Dreyfus Affair... read more
A memoir of his time at Slough Comprehensive, aka Eton. Okwonga is a writer and journalist now based in Berlin, a city "that leaves you alone" and the location of his recent auto-fiction 'I... read more
Frost is a prominent designer/decorator who set up the Aids Ark charity with his partner Jeremy Norman, the man who set up the Embassy Club and Heaven. They met in the 1980s, when AIDS began... read more
CN was a poet, pamphleteer and general dazzler, whose husband took the Prime Minister (Melbourne) to court for 'criminal conversation' with his wife - and lost. Old age has not dulled the pe... read more
The rich and varied life of the woman who introduced smallpox vaccination into the British Isles, a friend of Swift and Pope, and who is famous for her letters, especially those sent from Tu... read more
A memoir from one of the world's great handbag designers: a hugely successful entrepreneur, Anya is also a trustee of the Royal Academy and of the Design Museum; she's a Greenpeace ambassado... read more
The author's father was an American soldier who fell in love with a Japanese girl on the devastated island. This affecting book probes her own complex feeling and the attitudes among which s... read more
Better remembered now as Vanessa Bell's husband, CB's 1914 'Art' was a ground-breaking re-evaluation that stood at the centre of early C20th art. This fine biography reclaims his significanc... read more
A memoir by the cultural historian and Maltravers Herald Extraordinary, redhead and exultant non-driver, whose arms include three stags trippant. His book on James Wyatt is still the best; ... read more
A slim volume on life and thought of one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. It ranges over her dramatic life, her love affair with Martin Heidegger, exile, Eich... read more
Alex Renton is a journalist and writer: he uncovers his own family's slave-owning past and uses this as a means of approaching the growing debate about such legacies and contemporary consequ... read more
Son of Edward III, brother to the Black Prince, father to Henry IV: the man with the levers of power, to whom Shakespeare gave the speech about 'this sceptered isle'.
A riveting portrait of the man who sold many of the books that drove the Renaissance, who knew where manuscripts were, arranged for copies to be made and trod carefully among rival ruling fa... read more
The third son of a coal miner, Storey played Rugby and then went to the Slade School of Art. He taught in schools in the East End after the war, before becoming a highly successful writer - ... read more
It is 30 years since Hazel Holt's biography; many more since David Cecil and Philip Larkin championed her novels. The surprise, perhaps, is that she is read more now than when she first publ... read more
A biography of the man so vividly presented in Robert Edric's 2008 novel 'In Zodiac Light': the poet and composer who, following his experiences as a soldier in WW1, was confined to an asylu... read more
It seems that the stalwart defender of Imperial narratives and values was a compulsive and manipulative womanizer. Thousands of newly discovered letters show an unexpected side to the histor... read more
The fiendish young man, having driven poor Verlaine out of his wits and his marriage, abandoned poetry, then Europe, setting in Aden in 1880. A reprint from Eland.
An understanding and enquiring look at the demon drink and what it enables certain writers to achieve, and at what cost: Patrick Hamilton, Jean Rhys, Charles Jackson, Malcolm Lowry, Dylan Th... read more
The first biography of Mew since Penelope Fitzgerald's of 1984. The poet, once feted, has become as outcast as she felt herself to be; let us hope that Julia Copus' recent new edition of her... read more
Published in February, we missed this from our last list. Jeremy Heywood served under four Prime Ministers in various roles including as the first and only Permanent Secretary of 10 Downing ... read more