Biographies & Memoirs

'I adored this book. It's so Geena and so inspiring and such a wonderful read'
Emma Thompson


A Times Film and Theatre Book of the Year 2022

The story of Kenneth Grahame, author of the children's classic Wind in the Willows, and of the vision of English pastoral that inspired it.

Growing into war

The Things They Carried meets Three Cups of Tea in this inspirational true story of a Marine who finds his calling empowering youth in one of the largest slums in Africa.

"Help! I'm Married Alive!" Julia Stephenson, struggling to cope with life as a Surrey housewife, grimly welded to her electric floor polisher and fed up with her golf-addicted, BMW-driving husband, bolts to the fleshpots of London.

Astonishing insight into the life of a humanitarian psychiatrist working in war and disaster zones around the world - from Bosnia and 'mission-accomplished' Iraq, to tsunami-affected Aceh, post-earthquake Haiti and 'the Jungle' in Calais.

This title provides a unique pictorial biography of one of the most engaging and beautiful women of the 20th century. Diana was an icon whose life and legacy continues to fascinate the world.

This gripping, fully-illustrated true crime book explores a range of 25 serial murderers in an innovative new format, using timelines both of the murderers' lives but also precise hour-by-hour timelines of the crimes that take the reader into the events of a murder, showing the cat-and-mouse game between killer, victim and the police.

An ex-yacht chef uncovers the dark reality of life at sea. By the age of twenty-two, Melanie is ticking life's boxes as if filling in a routine survey. Good grades at school? Check. Reliable university degree? Check. Steady graduate job? Check. Her two feet are planted firmly on solid ground; her life ...

In this revealing 'psycho-geography', Dennis Marks makes a journey through the eastern borderlands of Europe to learn about the elusive writer Joseph Roth and the world in which he lived. The result is a riveting and involving documentary that reunites Roth with his creative landscape.

A powerful, visceral memoir of a life undone. As she speeds through her twenties, Birdie is oblivious that Saturn is journeying towards its notorious return. She's far too busy searching for a connection in all the wrong places. Amid the chaos, she is unaware that twenty-seven will see her reach an ultimate ...

A collection of candid, entertaining letters, spanning thirty years of wit, wisdom, gossip and intimacy.

The unforgettable memoir from the bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie.

A memoir of growing up amidst a group of the most brilliant intellectuals of a generation - now in paperback.

** THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 5 BESTSELLER ** ** FEATURED ON BBC ARTS' BETWEEN THE COVERS ** Award-winning comedian Sara Pascoe turns her attention to the things that really matter to humans - sex, power and money. 'A genuinely hilarious explanation of the science of sex' FRANKIE BOYLE 'I've never read a book ...

How Britain's most famous female poet invented herself and defied her times.

Fictional biography featuring real photographs from Sonya Tolstoy's life

A century after his novels first came out, E.M. Forster remains one of the most widely read and best-loved authors of the twentieth century. He made his name with novels such as 'A Room with a View' and 'Howards End', which, with their detailed analyses of English snobbery and racism, established him ...

Serving as a perfect introduction to this well-known French writer, Flaubert scholar Meryl Tyers’ work covers the remarkable life of the renowned author of Madame Bovary and A Sentimental Education. Accompanying Memoirs of a Madman and November, both published by Hesperus, this highly informative work ...

"Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857. After finishing school he became a sailor, an experience that he would later draw upon in novels such as Hear of Darkness." "Gavin Griffiths traces the history of this intriguing man from his early childhood in Poland, through his exotic, arduous years ...