Biography

In Lou Reed: The King of New York , Will Hermes seems unusually well attuned to his subject, while resisting any temptation to soft-pedal

Roger Lewis answers what it is about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor that still hooks us in

In his new book, Philip Hoare moves beyond his own hand to make something reckless, marvelous and unforgettable

The seventeenth-century philosopher and playwright was a trendsetting, quixotic genius

While I expected the le Carré who emerges from it to be a womanizer, a fantasist and a self-server, I didn’t anticipate that he would be such a terrible bore

The Marriage Question  shows us a woman fragmented

The writer is an easy man to admire and sympathize with, but a hard one to like

King: A Life is the first comprehensive biography of the black civil rights hero to appear in more than thirty years

His books and television adaptations keep coming, but we know little of J.R.R. Tolkien’s life

A new biography captures his entire world

The disgraced biographer may be ‘repellent’ but he still has a right to free speech

Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Fiona Sampson reviewed

The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense by Edward White reviewed

Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and His Last Muse reviewed

Richard Munson’s ‘Tesla: Inventor of the Modern’ emphasises the duality of his subject.

One would have thought this particular can of worms might, after nearly 80 years, be well past its sell-by date. But books about Mrs Simpson and her infatuated king appear with thudding frequency, each with some ever more far-fetched theory about this curious union. Now comes the leaden hand and leaden prose of Andrew Morton, … Read more