He was Churchill's secretary and edited the work of Somerset Maugham and Sassoon; his proteg?s included Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer and many others.
Brought up in late-Victorian Presbyterian Aberdeenshire, McBey became a war artist in WW1. A decade later he married the American Marguerite Loeb and went to live in Tangier, in a house on O... read more
The pursuit of two grandmothers, purged from the author's family history by her Hampstead communist parents: the vicissitudes of genealogy and family politics.
A multi-generational story of the remarkable Swedish family who made their fortune in Russia (founding the Russian oil industry) and then moved back to Sweden in 1917.
Ambassador for Henry VIII, Lord Protector of Edward VI, queen-maker and marriage broker for Mary, Paget continued to wield influence at Elizabeth I's court. He kept his head - by a whisker -... read more
A wry memoir of his recovery from a stroke in 2011, during which time his thoughts turned to his father too. Completed shortly before his death earlier this year.
Her life in disarray, La Stibbe returns to London for a sabbatical and lodges with Deborah Moggach. As ever she's funny, but there is pathos and pain here too.
Born in 1833, Watt was a servant from the age of nine; later, she sold her husband's catch from door to door. After the death of most of her male relatives at sea, she was cared for in the C... read more
A vivid portrait of a complex man approached through twelve books, including his mother's diary and Lolita. Beguiling and intriguing, he did not shun controversy.
Xi Jinping is head of the CCP, head of state and commander-in-chief of the military, with an indefinite period in office; he's centralised power, increased state control of the economy and i... read more
A huge work of scholarship that brings the late C5th/early C6th world to life. Theoderic stabilised Italy and extended his kingdom to include parts of France, the Iberian peninsula and the w... read more
Our former Prime Minister considers Hillsborough, Grenfell and many parliamentary scandals, arguing that time and again those in power have served their own interests or those of the organi... read more
Stewart's decade in Westminster. This will undoubtedly be the political memoir of the year: rational, intelligent, candid, passionate, angry, open-eyed, honourable.
The author's investigation of her family's history and her own identity was sparked by the arrival of an anonymous postcard bearing four names that arrived over forty years after those four ... read more
A compelling personal introduction to the life and work of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz by his compatriot and fellow exile Eva Hoffman. The predominant themes here ar... read more
Mozart was taken to Italy three times by his father in his early and mid-teens; already astonishingly accomplished as a thirteen-year-old, he drank in Italian opera like a thirsty man findin... read more
A Pulitzer Prize-winner's essays on musical greats who flourished again later in life: Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Patti Smith and many more. These are judicious and vivid portraits, som... read more
Though Royal Gardener to both Georges I and II and designer of gardens at Kensington Palace, Houghton and many other illustrious estates, Bridgeman's geometric taste and works were mostly ob... read more
Ortolans ahoy! A new edition of AJL's memoir of year spent feasting in Paris in the 1920s. His grande bouffe was determined and purposeful; the quantities of dishes eaten at a sitting bring ... read more
A joyous and detailed biography of this extraordinary man, whose house in Cambridge is still a sanctuary for the artistically-inclined. His circle included Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry... read more
Witty, tangential, self-deprecating, Amis's autobiography is not a chronological procession of memories but a frenzy of footnotes, asides, literary zigzags through time and space. It's funny... read more