Biography
James Baldwin – dogged by painful uncertainties throughout life
Often snared in emotional turmoil, he never knew who his father was, and resisted being pigeonholed on questions of race, blame and responsibility
Why Hitler’s suave architect escaped the noose at Nuremberg
Albert Speer was treated leniently because he was softly-spoken, well-dressed and ‘much the most appealing’ of all the defendants, according to Telford Taylor, one of the prosecutors
W.H. Auden’s virtuosity masked careful craftsmanship
Poetry came so easily to Auden that at times he had consciously to ‘keep the diction and rhythm within a hairsbreadth of prose without becoming it’
How Ulysses horrified the stuffed shirts of New York’s literary establishment
The magazine editor Margaret C. Anderson’s spirited attempts to introduce Joyce’s masterpiece to 1920s America resulted in a court case and heavy fine for disseminating obscenity
Rupert Murdoch’s warped vision of family
The absentee father, who always put his media empire first, enjoyed playing his children off against one another – with crippling consequences
Leonardo Sciascia and the reshaping of the detective novel
Crimes go unpunished while injustice is upheld and truth perverted. Such is the Mafia reality, according to the saturnine Sciascia
The turbulent life of the Marquis de Morès – the 19th-century aristocrat turned populist thug
Soldier, duelist and frontier ranchman, the anti-Semitic adventurer brought cowboy-style politics to the streets of Paris as the Third Republic lurched from one crisis to another
How ‘bad’ does a mother have to be to lose custody of her children?
In a bitter dispute in the family court, Lara Feigel is informed that her ‘wilful’ insistence on writing books is a clear indication that she is not putting her children first
The madness of Prince Rogers Nelson
The pop star’s extensive entourage were expected to be on call 24/7, responding to his every whim while turning a blind eye to the French farce of his love life
What is it about Bob Dylan that sends writers mad?
Though a witness to many seminal Dylan moments, Ron Rosenbaum has produced what feels like a long voice-note after the pub, full of bluster, conspiracy and giddy conjecture
The diminutive dictator who ruled Spain with an iron fist
Fifty years after Franco’s death, Giles Tremlett assesses the generalisimo’s bloodstained legacy
Jessica was the only Mitford worth taking seriously
But her unfailing humour does help lighten a solid new biography that focuses on her tireless campaign for social justice
How the teenage Carole King struck gold
Aged 18, she wrote ‘Will You (Still) Love Me Tomorrow’ which reached No 1 in the US – and the hits kept coming
The inspiration for David Lynch’s mysterious, disquieting world
A bizarre experience in the filmmaker’s adolescence involving a woman’s escape from domestic violence seems to have left an indelible mark
Unhappy band of brothers: the Beach Boys’ story
The quintessential Californian band who sang of sun, sand and surfing had, like the Golden State itself, a dark side as well as light
Paul Poiret and the fickleness of fashion
The master couturier, once celebrated by le tout Paris, found himself by the 1920s debt-ridden and eclipsed by the likes of Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli
The lonely passions of Katherine Mansfield
Mansfield’s early infatuations led to many catastrophic rejections – and even in their brief marriage, her husband John Middleton Murry would treat her with wounding indifference
The dangerous charm of Peter Matthiessen
The philandering author of the sublime The Snow Leopard spent a lifetime globe-hopping from the Amazonian jungle to the Siberian tundra at great cost to family life
The young Tennyson reaches for the stars
Richard Holmes describes how the poet’s early fascination with science – astronomy and geology in particular – would have a lasting influence on his writing
The short, restless life of Robert Louis Stevenson
The frail but hugely successful writer broke away from his Presbyterian roots to pursue a life of travel before finally settling with his wife in remote Samoa
The enigma of C.P. Cavafy
The homosexual poet from Alexandria avoided publication in his lifetime, despite being a ruthless self-promoter with a very high opinion of his own work
I actually feel sorry for Prince Andrew
Andrew Lownie’s minutely detailed account of the Duke of York’s disgrace and downfall achieves the near impossible
How can Gwyneth Paltrow bear so much ridicule?
The frail-looking movie star turns out to surprisingly thick-skinned as well as shrewd: a curious combination of entrepreneurial survivor and woo-woo artiste
The spiritual journey of St Augustine
Christians should consider themselves ‘peregrini’, said Augustine, and his life on the periphery of the Roman empire taught him that we are all citizens of nowhere
It was drug addiction that killed for Elvis, not his greedy manager
‘Colonel’ Tom Parker may have struck a hard bargain to fund his compulsive gambling habit, but his devotion to Presley was total, says Peter Guralnick
