Recent Biographies

Kit de Waal and her brother and sisters had a hard childhood in the West Midlands. Her Irish mother didn't feed them, didn't believe in Christmas or birthdays, and thought the world would end in 1975. Her father saved all his money to return to the Caribbean, where he planned to make a new life w...

We're all living in the Taylor Swift era. Since her 2006 debut album she's sold more than 200 million records, sold out countless arenas and become one of the most influential artists of her generation. Her Eras Tour is on track to gross more than $1 billion by the time it concludes in December 2...

Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own - when she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shape...

As a Bolton teenager with a paper round Clive Myrie read all the newspapers he delivered from cover to cover, and dreamed of becoming a journalist. Thirty years on, he's reported from more than ninety countries for the BBC. In this deeply personal memoir, he reflects on how being black has affect...

350,000: the number of missing person reports opened in the UK every year. But how do we find the missing? Charlie Hedges is a pioneer in the field of missing persons over a career spanning nearly four decades. During his work in the police force, then at the Missing Persons Bureau and the Child ...

Revealing the story of the man behind the jokes, this book is an ode to both Barry's incredible life and to the lessons he so generously imparted on the art of comedy during his 60-year career. Stretching from the music halls of the 50s, via working alongside everyone from Morecambe and Wise to J...

Chris Harris has driven more cars than most people could ever dream of. His vast knowledge is legendary. He calls it 'unhinged geekery'. But we call it infectious enthusiasm, adrenaline-fueled escapism and peerless journalistic rigour and integrity. And then there are his famous skills at the whe...

Wes Streeting might have ended up in prison rather than in parliament. His maternal grandfather Bill, an unsuccessful armed robber, spent time behind bars, as did his grandmother, who was also a political campaigner. Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the young Streeting saw his teenage pare...

Born in Swaziland in 1957, Richard E. Grant moved to the UK to pursue his acting career, and has been a fixture on our screens since his breakout role in 'Withnail and I' in 1987. When his beloved wife Joan died in 2021 after almost forty years together, she set him a challenge: to find a pocketf...

Nellie Melba is remembered as a squarish, late middle-aged woman dressed in furs and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for three decades and inspired a peach and raspberry dessert. But to succeed, she had to battle social expectations and misogyny that would have preferred...