Secondhand Literary Biography Books

Authoritative biography of cult writer William Burroughs (1914-1997).It has been 50 years since Norman Mailer asserted, 'I think that William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may...

AS FEATURED ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS, BIG SCOTTISH BOOK CLUB AND THE ZOE BALL BOOKCLUB, A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, OBSERVER,...

Maya Angelou's five volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman...

Clinging to the Wreckage - the first part of John Mortimer's hilarious and moving autobiography'A true masterpiece of the genre' The TimesHere John Mortimer recounts his solitary childhood in the...

The classic story of the relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, and a unique portrait of the Bloomsbury Group.'A brilliantly structured account of the dramas, infidelities and deep emotional...

One of the most critically acclaimed memoirs ever written. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series,...

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She...

'Are you going into town today?' she says, which annoys me because it's something she says all the time, having forgotten she said it before, and I say, 'Jesus, Mum,...

A deluded mother who invented her past, an alcoholic father who couldn't deal with the present, a son who wondered if this could really be his family. Richard Glover's favourite...

Alan Bennett's A Life Like Other People's is a poignant family memoir offering a portrait of his parents' marriage and recalling his Leeds childhood, Christmases with Grandma Peel, and the...

A hilarious collection of essays from 'the premier observer of our world and its weirdnesses,' New York Times bestselling author David Sedaris (Adam Kay, author of This is Going to...

'One brilliant woman writing about another: an irresistible combination.' - Antonia Fraser'One of the most delightful biographies I have ever read.' - A.N. Wilson'Reading Worsley is as enjoyable as reading...

A Guardian Book of the YearAn Evening Standard Book of the YearAn Independent Book of the Year Netgalley's non-fiction Book of the YearA national treasure's journey to the brink and...

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, longtime New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water. Good Samaritan Abdulrahman has stayed...

On 3 January 1882, Oscar Wilde, a twenty-seven-year-old "genius"-by his own reckoning-arrived in New York. The Dublin-born Oxford man had made a spectacle of himself in London with his fashion...

From the burning of Byron's memoirs, Jane Austen's clipped businesslike manner, and the lucrative controversy caused by the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, through to the discovery of the...

Ireland's greatest poet, William Butler Yeats, was also perhaps the outstanding poet to have written in English since Wordsworth.Many of his early poems - wistful, mysterious and suffused with Pre-Raphaelite...

The latest instalment from always funny, sometimes bizarre humourist David Sedaris. Praise for Theft By FindingThe writing here is funnier, (even) sharper . . . There isn't a dull word...

In this memoir of his childhood, O'Driscoll eloquently examines his troubled relationship with his father, whose bullying and mental abuse have affected him profoundly throughout his life. The task the...

From postcolonial Africa to revolutionary Iran, from the military dictatorships of Latin America to Soviet Russia, the Polish journalist and writer Ryszard Kapuscinski was one of the most dauntless and...

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDLonglisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fictionHow do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol -...

Shortlised for the Saltire Society Non Fiction Book of the Year Award Almost every adult and child is familiar with his Treasure Island, but few know that Robert Louis Stevenson...

The Boy Behind the Curtain is a portrait of a life, a place and a man. In this deeply personal collection of true stories and essays Tim Winton shows how...

When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them. Yet he was born in...

An intimate yet frank biography of Gore Vidal, one of the most accomplished, visible and controversial American novelists and cultural figures of the past century. The product of thirty years...

A fascinating exploration of the contents of Agatha Christie's 73 recently discovered notebooks, including illustrations, deleted extracts, and two unpublished Poirot stories. When Agatha Christie died in 1976, aged 85,...

In this much anticipated addition to the Eminent Lives series, Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet...

One May night in 1922, in a grand hotel in Paris, five of the greatest artists of the 20th century sat down to supper. It would be the only time...

TWO LIVES tells the remarkable story of Seth's great uncle and aunt. His great uncle Shanti left India for medical school in Berlin in the 1930s and lodged with a...

A Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller As one of the best biographers of her generation, Claire Tomalin has written about great novelists and poets to huge success: now, she turns...

Angela Carter was one of the most vivid voices of the twentieth century. When she died in 1992 at the age of fifty-one, she had published fifteen books of fiction...

Hailed by Virginia Woolf and many others as the all-time great letter writer, Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of Thomas Carlyle, is not as well known today as she should be....

In 1994, Anchee Min published Red Azalea, a memoir of growing up during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. It became an international bestseller. Twenty years later, Min returns...

'In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . .'Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal,...

The biographer - so often in the shadows, kibbitzing, casting doubt, proving facts - here comes to the stage.James Atlas takes us back to his childhood in suburban Chicago, where...

In December 1991, Allende's daughter Paula, aged 28 fell gravely ill and sank into a coma. This book started as a letter to Paula written during the hours spent at...

*THE NO.3 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* 'Raw, compelling, wise and tender' Dolly Alderton'Motherwell is razor-sharp, fearless and wonderful' Adam Kay'Utterly candid and staggeringly good, both as the history of a woman...

Autobiographical and idiosyncratic, this is a collection of Alan Bennett's prose writings, assembled by Bennett himself from 25 years of diaries, reminiscences, broadcasting and reviews. It includes his address at...

One bright day in December 2001, sixty-two-year-old Germaine Greer found herself confronted by an irresistible challenge in the shape of sixty hectares of dairy farm, one of many in south-east...