Memoir
Landscapes of longing in illuminated Books of Hours
Recalling his lonely childhood in New Zealand, Christopher de Hamel describes how his enduring love of medieval manuscripts took root
The harm of dwelling on a traumatic past
The important thing is to navigate life in such a way that you are not consumed by painful memories, says the psychiatrist Gwen Adshead
Living in the shadow of Etna
The myriad businesses thriving in the volcano’s rich soil and varying microclimates can be destroyed in a matter of minutes, as Helena Attlee reminds us
Lloyd Blankfein – guiding light of Goldman Sachs
While considered a safe pair of hands during the financial crisis of 2007, Blankfein skirts around some of Goldman’s more controversial decisions at the time
Frederic Prokosch – the man who seemed to know everyone
A beguiling memoir boasts intimate encounters with many of the 20th century’s most celebrated writers – but should we believe a word of it?
The sorrows of the young Melvyn Bragg
His first impression of Oxford University in 1958 was of ‘effortless wealth and privilege everywhere’ and, feeling like a foreigner, he pined for the familiarity of close-knit Wigton
The lost world of the pinball machine
In a touchingly Proustian memoir, Andreas Bernard hymns a youth spent flipping small steel balls in bars and resort arcades throughout Europe and America
The citizens of nowhere adrift in the West
Threatened with violence in her native Turkey, the writer Ece Temelkuran finds herself, like countless migrants, permanently ‘unhomed’
Growing up with thieves, murderers and heroin addicts
Aged ten, Jonathan Tepper was manning phones and scheduling deliveries at his parents’ drug rehabilitation centre in San Blas, Madrid – ‘a rescue shop within a yard of hell’
Forgetting was the best defence for the Kindertransport refugees
Alfred and Doris Moritz remained largely silent about their persecution in Nazi Germany, having tried their best to erase the memory, according to their son Michael
Mark Haddon attempts to exorcise the memory of a loveless childhood
Between a father who designed abattoirs and a callous, unresponsive mother, Haddon is left depression-prone, taking a perverse pleasure in envisaging catastrophe
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
A young Englishwoman is caught up in the Russian Revolution
Rhoda Power’s first-hand account of the Tsar’s abdication and the coming of the Bolsheviks was first published in 1919 and has never really been surpassed
The adventures of an improbable rock journalist
Cameron Crowe started writing for Rolling Stone aged just 15. But both as reporter and later as filmmaker, his innate decency made him decidedly ‘uncool’
The strange afterlife of This is Spinal Tap
The creators of the mother of all mockumentaries share anecdotes about the film’s origins, how it was made, why it matters and the way fiction transformed into fact
Margaret Atwood settles old scores
Being a Scorpio, the 85-year-old novelist explains, she ‘holds grudges’ – but the many past grievances she recalls in detail make for dispiriting reading
My life as a writer
It was roughly 55 years ago, at the tail end of the 1960s, that I took the monumental decision to…
Childhood illnesses and instability left Patti Smith yearning for ‘sacred mysteries’
Bedridden for much of her youth, she found consolation in music, and a way ‘into fairyland’ through a treasured poetry anthology
Escape from investment banking to the open road – a biking odyssey
Miles Morland notches up 50,000 miles on his BMW 1000 with trips through Europe, Argentina, Japan, Australia and the United States – without a single accident
Laughing at Putin is a powerful form of protest
A constant round of fines, surveillance and detention is alleviated by jokes, mischief and a joyous love affair for Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina
Justin Currie’s truly remarkable rock memoir
Aged 58, and suffering from Parkinson’s, Del Amitri’s chief songwriter never loses his sense of humour as he treks across America, playing in cowsheds, state fairs and parking lots
A literary Russian doll: The Tower, by Thea Lenarduzzi, reviewed
The closer we get to the mystery of Annie, a 19th-century consumptive locked up in a tower by her wealthy father, the more we are lost in other stories within stories
The vanished glamour of New York nightlife
Booze, coke, models, parties… Mark Ronson’s vivid account of DJing in the 1990s is a celebration of a lost world
Even now, Nick Clegg offers too little too late
In contrast to Sarah Wynn-Williams’s tell-all memoir of life at Facebook published earlier this year, Clegg’s ponderous account of his time at Meta is barely a tell-anything
My husband first and last – by Lalla Romano
In a touching memoir, Romano describes a shared intellectual life with Innocenzo Monti, from their first meeting in the Piedmont mountains to their final months together
