Biography & Memoir

Coco Chanel, high priestess of couture, created the look of the chic modern woman. Chanel believed in simplicity: she freed women from their corsets and inspired them to crop their hair; and created elegant trousers, trench coats and jersey sweaters. By the 1920s, Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms... read more

Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life tells the story of the life, loves and work of Leonard Cohen, the poet, songwriter and singer 'born with the gift of a golden voice.' As the man himself once dryly put it.Anthony Reynolds' fascinating and detailed biography draws on scores of new interviews conducted with Cohen's band members ... read more

After 3 decades of groundbreaking music Bruce Springsteen still manages to amaze audiences around the world with his live shows and bring new fans to his music with every album release. Highly acclaimed music critic Peter Carlin tracks the Boss's dazzling ascent to fame, whilst painting a vivid portrait of the real Springstee... read more

The extraordinary story of the eccentric family of Britain's most outstanding military historian, Max Hastings.
The author is the son of broadcaster and adventurer Macdonald Hastings and journalist and gardening writer Anne Scott-James. One of his grandfathers was a literary editor while the other wrote plays and essays... read more

Diana Athill made her reputation as a writer with the candour of her memoirs, now aged ninety, and freed from any inhibitions that even she may once have had, she reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains that old age brings, and on the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. This is a lively narrative of... read more

The true story of an orphaned Cambodian girl who spent her childhood in slavery and prostitution and now combats trafficking. Somaly Mam has a strong international profile and supporters include Hillary Clinton, the Queen of Spain and Angelina Jolie.

'With this one word, Lili had finally understood many things: that no matter what she promised or sacrificed or gave, she would always be 'broken' to her daughter'. When Jasmin Darznik finds a photo among her father's possessions shortly after his death, she recognises the child in the veil and bride's clothes as her mother, ... read more

On a mild winter's evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town and drew up at 8 Royal Circus, a grand sandstone house lit by gas lamps. This was the home of the rich widow Lady Drysdale, a vivacious hostess whose soirees were th... read more

During the US book tour for his memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens collapsed in his New York hotel room to excoriating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of deeply moving Vanity Fair pieces, he was being deported 'from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks... read more

Handpicked in 1999 by the 'Family' surrounding an ailing and increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, with very little governmental or administrative experience beyond having served as deputy mayor of St Petersburg, seemed like the perfect choice in the eyes of an oligarchy bent on moulding the president's succes... read more

Candia McWilliam had just joined the judging panel of the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2006 when she started to lose her sight. The gradual onset of blindness seemed especially cruel to someone whose life depended on reading and writing.
As McWilliam's sight disappeared she looked inwards and began to remember her Ed... read more

Adele needs no introduction. From humble beginnings she has come to be a globally recognized icon. Her first album shot her to fame and the second consolidated her position as a singing/songwriting superstar with lasting, global appeal. She has already won more than 40 industry awards, including 11 Billboard Music Awards, a B... read more

On 25 February 1956, twenty-three-year-old Sylvia Plath walked into a party and immediately spotted Ted Hughes. This encounter - now one of the most famous in all literary history - was recorded by Plath in her journal, where she described Hughes as a 'big, dark, hunky boy'. Sylvia viewed Ted as something of a colossus, and t... read more

A miracle of still-plentiful hair, raw sex-appeal, and strutting talent . The frontman of one of the most influential and controversial groups of all time. A musical genius with a career spanning over four decades. He is a testament to British glamour, the ultimate architect and demi-god of rock. Bestselling biographer Philip... read more

Comedian and radio host Sara Benincasa's life hasn't always been a funny joyride. Since childhood, she strugged with panic disorder, becoming by age twenty-one a full-on obsessive, cowering, trembling agoraphobe. Terrified to leave her own apartment, she stacked empty cans and jars against the wall of her tiny studio apartmen... read more

With all the emotional power of The Kite Runner, this is the very first true life account of growing up in Afghanistan, by a writer who still lives in Kabul. Qais Akbar Omar's young life coincided with one of the most convulsive decades in Afghan history: civil war, the rise of the Taliban, and the arrival of international tr... read more

When Mahita was 15, her teacher at Catholic school in Singapore said she could see the devil in her eyes. While growing up, then raising a family of her own, she constantly fought to understand and control this 'devil' inside her. Born to Indian parents in Singapore and raised by a Chinese amah, Mahita Vas struggled to fit i... read more

After twenty-five years of "sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine", chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain has decided to tell all. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he first experiences the real delights of being a chef); throug... read more

It is 1941. While the 'war of chaos' rages in the skies above London, an unending fight against violence, murder and the criminal underworld continues on the streets below. One ordinary day, in an ordinary courtroom, forensic pathologist Dr Keith Simpson asks a keen young journalist to be his secretary. Although the 'horrors ... read more

I was only sixteen when I bought an electric guitar and joined a band. A year later, I formed an all-girl band called the Marine Girls and played gigs, and signed to an indie label, and started releasing records. Then, for eighteen years, between 1982 and 2000, I was one half of the group Everything But the Girl. In that time... read more