Autobiography
The sexual escapades of Edmund White sound like an improbably sordid Carry On film
The octogenarian writer seems unable to resist the burlesque, describing the most lurid encounters at an apparently droll remove
The ghost of his father haunts Winston Churchill
In a whimsical piece written by Churchill in 1947, Lord Randolph’s ethereal figure appears in the studio at Chartwell – to muse on the possibility of a political career for his son
‘You can really sing!’ – Sonny discovers the teenage Cher
The moment Sonny heard the voice of the girl he employed as a cleaner, both their fortunes changed – and two years later the couple would be greeted by 5,000 screaming fans in New York
Four legs good, two legs bad – the philosophy of Gerald Durrell
From a young man determined to protect the world’s vulnerable species, Durrell became in middle age someone who loathed the species of which he was a member
The good soldier Maczek – a war hero betrayed
After fighting for the Allies in Hungary, France, Belgium and Holland, Stanislaw Maczek finds himself stripped of his Polish citizenship as a result of the Yalta conference
Who’s still flying the flag for Britpop?
Alex James’s embrace of the term distinguishes him from his contemporaries. Miranda Sawyer reminds us of how much of the best 1990s music fell outside Britpop’s retromania
Fortitude, emotional intelligence and wit – the defining qualities of Simon Russell Beale
The Shakespearean actor has taken on 18 of the great roles since his first gig at the RSC in 1985 and recalls them with insight, sensitivity and a sharp passion for language
From street urchin to superstar: the unlikely career of Al Pacino
Ellen Barkin, Al Pacino’s lover-cum-prime- suspect in his comeback movie Sea of Love (1989), once dismissed the artifice of the…
David Baddiel’s father and mother must be the most talked about parents in Britain
Colin the Dinky Toys dealer, familiar from Baddiel’s TV documentaries, emerges from this memoir as a relentless bully, but at least the ‘fantasist’ Sarah provides suitably funny anecdotes
‘I’m a hypocrite and a total fraud’ – the confessions of a French Surrealist poet
My writing is mere bricolage … whatever I do, I only half do’, wails Michel Leiris in the final volume of his self-lacerating autobiography
The sheer drudgery of professional tennis
The most surprising thing about Conor Niland’s bruising account of his tennis career is that he emerges with his sanity intact
The ordeal of sitting for my father Lucian Freud
Rose Boyt describes posing naked over many nights – supplied with purple hearts by Freud to keep her awake – and her shock on finally seeing the result
The lonely passions of Emily Hale and Mary Trevelyan
Tom Williams describes how two women’s hopes of marrying T.S. Eliot came to nothing
Ian McEwan’s capacity for reinvention is astonishing
Ian McEwan’s latest novel is unusually long and autobiographical. It’s surprising in other ways, too, says Claire Lowdon
Jonathan Bate weaves a memoir around madness in English literature
There is a trend for books in which academics write personally about their engagement with literature. Examples include Lara Feigel’s…
The stuff of everyday life: Real Estate, by Deborah Levy, reviewed
Real Estate is the third and concluding volume of Deborah Levy’s ground-breaking ‘Living Autobiography’. Fans of Levy’s alluring, highly allusive…
Transport to Australia was the saving of Carmen Callil’s family
If 2020 has given us something to talk about other than Covid, it’s been history — and, more precisely, to…
No one ‘got’ the Sixties better than David Bailey
What caught my eye towards the end of Look Again was this conversation between David Bailey and the shoe designer…
Barack Obama was decidedly a man of action as well as words
Barack Obama was famous for his rhetoric, but his achievements show just what a steely political operator he was too, says Sam Leith
Helen Macdonald could charm the birds out of the trees
When Helen Macdonald was a child, she had a way of calming herself during moments of stress: closing her eyes,…
Is this the last round in the great celebrity Punch and Judy show?
It’s been tough recently being Woody Allen, something that didn’t look too easy to begin with. Last year Amazon breached…
Unspeakably prolix and petty: will anyone want to read John Bercow’s autobiography?
In his autobiography, John Bercow takes his peerage as a given. But that might be scuppered by accusations of bullying, says Lynn Barber
Why David Suchet makes the perfect Poirot
I can imagine a quiz question along the lines of ‘What do Shylock, Lady Bracknell, Sigmund Freud and Hercule Poirot…
Neither ‘Mad Dog’ nor ‘Warrior Monk’, General Jim Mattis is a thoughtful strategist
General Jim Mattis ended his remarkable career as a four-star US marine general, and finally as US secretary of defense.…
The unfamiliar Orwell: the writer as passionate gardener
Sara Wheeler 27 November 2021 9:00 am
This is a book about George Orwell’s recognition that desire and joy can be forces of opposition to the authoritarian…