Biographies & Memoirs

When he was very young, Simon Garfield lusted after rare stamps but could not afford them. But it is also a story of wooden legs, pornography in the Finchley Road, Pele's World Cup shirt, the man who guards stamps for the Queen, and a woman who is terrified of the Post Office Tower.

A dazzling portrait of the life and times of James Hogg.

Electric Shepherd is a likeness of James Hogg, Scottish Borderer and international literary star, who shared an epoch and an environment with Walter Scott.

When, as a boy, Mehta finds his father weeping uncontrollably on his mother's shoulder during a New York dinner party, he begins to unravel a family mystery that takes him on a painful and revealing voyage into his father's past in the exotic, closed world of British India.

First edited collection of the columns of Wilfred De'Ath, regular columnist with monthly mag the Oldie with an introduction by Melvin Bragg. Original cover artwork and line-drawings by renowned illustrator, Larry. Contains an insightful and humorous first-hand account of life as a homeless intellectual—who ...

Family & health.

A humorous memoir of growing up in Newry predominantly Catholic and sometimes fiercely Nationalist' in the 1940s and 50s. It focuses on the figures of the author's father, a hard working and deeply thoughtful family man, and especially his mother an ordinary/extraordinary' woman.

Since the 1980s, France has experienced a vigorous revival of interest in its past and cultural heritage. This has been expressed as part of a movement of remembering through museums and festivals as well as via elaborate commemorations, most notably those held to celebrate the bi-centenary of the ...

Born in 1940, one of eight children, Maxine Hong Kingston is the daughter of Chinese immigrants to America. This memoir recalls her first major work "The Woman Warrior" in which she blended Chinese myth with fiction and autobiography to reflect on her mother's past life in China and the experience of immigrants to America.

A gripping true tale of life in Russia, Turkey, and the United States, A Nomad's Journey shares the incredible story of Atilla Bektore and his father, Shevki Bektore. Born in Dobruja, Rumania, in 1888, Shevki Bektore dreams of being a teacher in his ancestral land of the Crimea. When the horrifying events ...

A concise biography of one of the most popular of Victorian novelists.

George IV continues to be admired as a collector of discernment and an architectural patron of genius. Yet his life was also stalked by tragedy and farce: his father was considered mad, his daughter died in childbirth and his secret marriage was illegal. This biography introduces the monarch.

Here the author offers an intimate account of the American immigrant experience, recounting the moving story of his grandparents' struggle to build a new life in turn-of-the-century America. By turns charming, wrenching, and poetic, this book is an intensely personal yet timeless tale that will appeal to nearly every descendant of immigrants.

This autobiography details the story of Larry Flynt's rise from small town beginnings to become one of the richest men in America, owning a string of nightclubs, sex outlets and, of course, the infamous pornographic magazine, "Hustler".

In 1764-65, the irrepressible playwright Beaumarchais travelled to Madrid, where he immersed himself in the life and society of the day. This book is an account of Beaumarchais's visit to Madrid (he never went to Seville) and a re-creation of the society that fired his imagination.

The spiritual journey of Pouge's frontman Shane MacGowan's girlfriend, after having hit rock bottom with her hard-partying lifestyle.

First published in 1996, this is a powerful exploration of the mysteries and passions at the heart of family life, and the price one family paid for their father's denial of his identity. Only after his death did Louise begin slowly to discover the truth he'd been hiding and start to make sense of his past - and therefore her own.

Simon Gray is determined to give up smoking. Can he kick the habit of sixty years? Will he, sometime soon, be able to leave his house without nervously feeling for his two packets of twenty and his two lighters? This is the final volume of the trilogy that began with "The Smoking Diaries".

Fifty years ago, in the fall of 1957, two thirteen-year-old boys were enrolled at an elite, boys-only New England boarding school. One of them, descended from wealth and eminence, would go on to Yale, then to a career as a navy officer and Vietnam war hero, and finally to the U.S. Senate, from where ...

'An extraordinary, moving book ... like opening a jewellery box packed with beautiful, unusual gems' Marian Keyes

Presents a memorable portrait of the volcanic city from an American writer who has lost his heart to the place and to a mysterious Neapolitan woman. Naples is an amalgam of equivocal beauty, betrayals and secrets, a wounded city whose commonplace wonders are conjured by this lyrical book.