Memoir & biography Books 119 results

Janis Tomlinson

The first major English-language biography of Francisco Goya y Lucientes, who ushered in the modern eraThe life of Francisco Goya (1746-1828) coincided with an age of transformation in Spanish history that brought upheavals in the country's politics and at the court which Goya served, changes in society, the devastation of the Iberian Peninsula in the war against Napoleon, and ...

Lyndall Gordon

"Among the greatest of poets, TS Eliot protected his privacy while publicly associated with three women: two wives and a church-going companion. This presentation concealed a life-long love for an American: Emily Hale, a drama teacher to whom he wrote (and later suppressed) over a thousand letters. Hale was the source of "memory and desire" in The Waste Land; she is the Hyacint...

Alex Pappademas

Keanu Reeves: Most Triumphant is a tribute to and exploration of the magic behind one of Hollywood's most legendary and unknowable stars and the profound lessons we can learn from his success. There can be no doubt: Keanu Reeves is a phenomenon. He's at once a badass action star, a hunky dreamboat who People magazine has called "the Internet's boyfriend," a vintage motorcycle ...

Erik Larson

"The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twel...

Andrew Morton

Andrew Morton's highly acclaimed biography of Meghan Markle, first published just before her marriage to Prince Harry, reflected on the impact that Meghan had already had on the ridged traditions of the House of Windsor. However, little did anyone know at that time how the forces at work would play out. How would this confident, assured actress and humanitarian campaigner cope ...

Joan Didion

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come. A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their daughter fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, t...

Lidia Yuknavitch

From the debris of her troubled early life, Lidia Yuknavitch weaves an astonishing tale of survival. It is a life that navigates, and transcends, abuse, addiction, self-destruction and the crushing loss of a stillborn child. A kind of memoir that is also a paean to the pursuit of beauty, self-expression, desire - for men and women - and the exhilaration of swimming, The Chronol...

Chanel Miller

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING MEMOIR 'Incredibly moving and haunting' Roxane Gay 'I read this book cover to cover and it stunned me' Jia Tolentino 'Powerful, honest and necessary' Marian Keyes 'To girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought every day for you. So never stop fighti...

Dolly Alderton

***THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 5 BESTSELLER*** 'A wonderful writer, who will surely inspire a generation the way that Caitlin Moran did before her' Julie Burchill 'I loved it so much, I wanted it to go on forever, Dolly Alderton is so gifted at making people care. A rare talent' Marian Keyes When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming a grown up, journalist and former Sunday ...

Deborah Levy

From the twice-Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home : Dazzling, essential, entirely unlike anything else -- a memoir on modern womanhood, rejecting oppressive social expectations and turning instead towards a thrilling, transformative freedom What does it mean to be free? What kind of women are we allowed to become? What would it feel like to live w...

Chris Kraus

Rich girl, street punk, lost girl and icon ... scholar, stripper, victim and media-whore- The late Kathy Acker's legend and writings are wrapped in mythologies, created mostly by Acker herself. In this first, fully authorized biography, Kraus approaches Acker both as a writer, and as a member of the artistic communities from which she emerged. At once forensic and intimate, Aft...

Patti Smith

"Devotion is short enough to devour at one enjoyable sitting and thought-provoking enough to deserve re-reading."--Suzi Feay, Financial Times "Devotion shows rather than tells what it means to give a life to writing. "--Katherine Cooper, Hyperallergic A work of creative brilliance may seem like magic--its source a mystery, its impact unexpectedly stirring. How does an artist a...

Orhan Pamuk

Since the publication of Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk has continued to add to his collection of photographs of Istanbul. Now, he has selected a range of photographs for the illustrated edition, linking each new image to his memoir. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His port...

Paul Kalanithi

THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 'Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option...Unmissable' New York Times At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the...

Chrissie Hynde

By the time she was 14, Chrissie Hynde knew she had to get out of Akron, Ohio. Her perfect '50s American childhood upturned by a newly acquired taste for rock 'n' roll, motorbikes and the 'get down boys' seen at gigs in and around Cleveland - Mitch Ryder, the Jeff Beck Group, the Velvet Underground and David Bowie among the many. Wrapped up in the Kent State University riots an...

Edmund White

______________ 'Paris may well be White's pearl, but he is in fact the real pearl ... This wonderfully eccentric, conversational and personalised cultural history contains the essence of Edmund White ... Entertaining and wry, White is worldly-wise and wise' - Eileen Battersby, Irish Times 'Edmund White writing about his Paris years, with walk-on parts for Catherine Deneuve, Y...

Laurence Bergreen

He knew nothing of celestial navigation or of the existence of the Pacific Ocean. He was a self-promoting and ambitious entrepreneur. His maps were a hybrid of fantasy and delusion. When he did make land, he enslaved the populace he found, encouraged genocide, and polluted relations between peoples. He ended his career in near lunacy. But Columbus had one asset that made all th...

Patti Smith

This book presents a portrait of two young artist's ascent - Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, 'Just Kids' begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It intends to serve as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. ...

Ian Mortimer

King for fifty years (1327—77), Edward III changed the face of England. He ordered his uncle to be beheaded; he usurped his father's throne; he started a war which lasted for more than a hundred years, and taxed his people more than any other previous king. Yet for centuries, Edward III was celebrated as the most brilliant king England had ever had. In this first full study of ...

Daniel Tammet

'Born On A Blue Day' is a fascinating and touching memoir from real-life Rain Man, Daniel Tammet, who has the extremely rare condition Savant Syndrome. ...

Malcolm X / Alex Haley

They called him the 'angriest black man in America' . . . Celebrated and vilified the world over for his courageous but bitter fight to gain for millions of black men and women the equality and respect denied them by their white neighbours, Malcolm X inspired as many people in the United States as he caused to fear him. His remarkable autobiography, completed just before his mu...

David Sedaris

A riotous collection of memoirs which explores the absurd hilarity of modern life and creates a wickedly incisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedaris from his humiliating bout with obsessive behaviour in 'A Plague of Tics' to the title story, where he is finally forced to face his naked self in the company of lunatics. At this soulful and moving moment, he b...

Malcolm X / Alex Haley

Malcolm X's The Autobiography of Malcolm X was written in collaboration with Alex Haley, author of Roots, and includes an introduction by Paul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic, in Penguin Modern Classics. From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the puritanical fervour of the Black Musl...

Malcolm X

ONE OF TIME'S TEN MOST IMPORTANT NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY With its first great victory in the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the civil rights movement gained the powerful momentum it needed to sweep forward into its crucial decade, the 1960s. As voices of protest and change rose above the din of history and false promises...

Helene Hanff

This book is the very simple story of the love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks and Co, sellers of rare and secondhand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London'. DAILY TELEGRAPH Told in a series of letters in 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD and then in diary form in the second part THE DUCHESS OF BLOOMSBURY STREET, this true story has touched the hearts of tho...

André Aciman

"In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled from Egypt. Though Aciman's family had been well-off in Alexandria, all vestiges of their status vanished when they fled, and the author, his younger brother, and his deaf mother moved into a rented apartment (eventually revealed to ...

Majid Parsa

An unflinching memoir about growing up in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, and yet underground, hidden from Sharia law, is a vibrant gay scene threatening to burst open.The dawn prayer calls echo through the streets. As many make their way to mosques, for some it signals the end of another illegal gay party. Under the cover of darkness, smiles on lips and s...

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou's phenomenal seven volume autobiography is now available on the Virago Modern Classics list.[Bokinfo]. ...

Salman Rushdie

**Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2024** A gripping account of survival and recovery from internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie 'A masterpiece... Extraordinary' Daily Telegraph 'A story of hatred defeated by love' Guardian On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was sitting onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lec...

Mike Rothmiller / Douglas Thompson

Drawing on new interviews and previously hidden police and intelligence files, Reckless finally reveals the full corruption of America's Camelot.For a time, John F. Kennedy ran the US and the world like a player with loaded dice. All his life, he expected to be serviced. For most, sex is an optional side order; for JFK, it was demanded: a manifestation of his majesty, his power...