Book review – biography
Disciplined exoticism
Lewis Jones on Ian Fleming’s Jamaican retreat and the inspiration it provided for the Bond novels
Money to burn
The robber barons of the gilded age, at the turn of the 20th century, were the most ruthless accumulators of…
Bachelor girl
Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big…
Mr Nice Guy
I’m not making a picture [The Green Berets] about Vietnam, I’m making a picture about good against bad. I happen…
Stale, male and beyond the pale
This has all the appearance of a book invented by a publisher. Two years ago W. Sydney Robinson published an…
Bare-faced lies
Lillian Hellman must be a maddening subject for a biographer. The author Mary McCarthy’s remark that ‘every word she writes…
Brilliant, devoted and beautiful
‘Curious to see Mrs Aveling addressing the enormous crowd, curious to see the eyes of the women fixed upon her…
A rake’s progress
Philip Hensher on the scandalous 17th-century courtier whose hellfire reputation has overshadowed his fine satirical poetry
Extreme poetic licence
On Laurie Lee’s centenary, Jeremy Treglown wonders how the writer’s legacy stands up
The enlightened one
‘Arabist’ is fast becoming an archaism. Perhaps it is already one. These days the word conjures up enchanting visions of…
Irresistible zing and pizzazz
Philip Hensher on the tragically short life of the ebullient and multi-talented musician, Constant Lambert
‘Rather like his own ugly duck’
It has long been my habit, when approaching a new biography, to read the account of the subject’s childhood first,…
Up close and personal
In recycling his most intimate encounters as fiction – including amazing feats of promiscuity in small-town New England – John Updike drew unashamedly on his own experiences for inspiration, says Philip Hensher
Politics as Victorian melodrama
The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith
The little dictator
No actual birth certificate for Charles Spencer Chaplin has ever been found. The actor himself drew a blank when he…
A champion of liberal reform
Roy Jenkins may have been snobbish and self-indulgent, but he was also a visionary and man of principle who would have made a good prime minister, says Philip Ziegler
Cracking up
The troubles of Richard Pryor’s life are well known — from his childhood in a brothel to his self-immolation via…
The right sort of chap
Kim Philby’s treachery escaped detection for so long through the stupidity and snobbery of the old-boy network surrounding him, says Philip Hensher
From post office girl to woman of letters
Melanie McDonagh on Flora Thompson, whose revealing account of rural Oxfordshire life at the turn of the 19th century became a literary classic
Outfoxed in the desert
What an unedifying affair the war in the North African desert was, at least until November 1942 and the victory…
A bold artistic vision
Sam Leith on the exasperating, charismatic painter who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee
Lady in waiting
The actor David Niven was once badgered by the American columnist William F. Buckley to introduce him to Marc Chagall,…
The halo slips further
Tom Bower’s first biography of Sir Richard Branson, in 2000, was memorable for its hilarious account of the Virgin tycoon’s…
Charming the princes
The ‘dollar princesses’, those American heiresses who crossed the Atlantic in search of a titled husband, are familiar figures from…
Trampling out the vintage
John Steinbeck (1902–1968), an ardent propagandist for the exploited underdogs of the Great Depression, had barely enough money for subsistence…
