Biographies & Memoirs

Elizabeth Paterson worked for International PEN for 29 years and witnessed many strange events, often comic or farcical. The work pays tribute to this international writers' organization and reveals many great writers in unguarded moments.

This is Diana Athill's memoir of her life in publishing. It includes her reflections on editing writers such as V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Gitta Sereny and Brian Moore. Athill also offers an account of her own writing career, which includes the works, "Instead of a Letter" and "After a Funeral".

This is the autobiography of a man described as "an institution, one of the great English eccentrics of our time", as well as being immortalized by Private Eye as "Hugh Massivesnob".

Witty, catty and entertaining, Paris Was Yesterday is an insider's guide to the arts scene in Paris between the wars.

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An outstanding collection of profiles from The New Yorker Magazine providing a unique investigation into the character, motives and madness of some of the century's most compelling characters.

The last book Virginia Woolf saw into print before her death," Roger Fry, is her one serious full-length biography. In her introduction Diane F. Gillespie traces Woolf's work on the biography and provides a history of its critical reception. Appendices contain previously unpublished memoirs by Fry, a ...

Diana Athill's memoir of a life spent working with some of the charismatic characters who have dominated 20th-century literature. With inimitable wit and rare candour, she recounts tales from a long life in publishing, including reflections on editing writers such as Jean Rhys and Gitta Sereny.

Stephen Hebron traces Keats' life and development as a poet, assessing his work in the context of the contemporary social and literary scene. Keats died at an early age, leaving what have become some of the best-known English poems, such as "Ode to a Nightingale".

SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2019

'Beautiful, unusual and memorable ... I love this book' - Maggie Nelson, author of THE ARGONAUTS

'Smart, funny, insightful and unexpected ... perfect summer reading' - Jon McGregor, Guardian Summer Reading

In Can You Tolerate This? - the title comes from ...

The extraordinary life of history's first modern lesbian who inspired the television series Gentleman Jack.

This gruesome guide details over 100 of the world's most infamous murderers and their associated crimes.
In easy to understand format, each subject is comprehensively detailed under the headings: name (and alias if any), victims, locus, dates of crimes, means, motive and lastly crime watch which graphically ...

"Art critic Blake Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions. 'The meanings of his art depend on the way he lived and who he was,' as Gopnik writes. 'That's why the details of his biography matter more than for almost any cultural figure,' from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing ...

John Lehmann (1907-1987) was, for 50 years, at the centre of literary life in England. In this biography, his professional and private lives are brought together and re-evaluated.

Pope contrasts what we know about Cabot with what we think we know, and shows how the invention of various traditions has shaped debates about his landing in North America.

Well known for her novels To The Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and the feminist work A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf led an intriguing and often difficult life that is fascinatingly portrayed in this new biography from Woolf scholar David Bradshaw. The author looks at Woolf’s work in the light of ...

The only Monte Carlo gambler to devise an infallible and completely legal system to break the bank.

Nicky Haslam has always been at the centre of things wherever he is - at parties, opening nights, royal weddings - and has stories to tell of crossing paths, and more, with the cultural icons of our time: Cecil Beaton, Francis Bacon, Diana Cooper, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe to name but a few.