Prominent in both Thatcher and Major's cabinets, the author is a shrewd observer of the corridors of power, with their surprising chicanes and U-turns.
An account by a London financier of her family in Japan over the last 150 years. The huge changes they have navigated are described with sympathy and careful research.
From New Jersey she went to Iran, where she abandoned her PhD on Jane Austen while fleeing the 1979 Revolution; then China and Saudi Arabia, before settling in Venice. There she began lookin... 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
Born in Kenya, the author was two when the Mau Mau uprising began. A powerful memoir of this very difficult period and the end of empire in Kenya.The author worked for many years for the BBC... 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
The author of Oblomov spent the years 1852-1854 as secretary to Admiral Putyatin on board the Pallada; they sailed to Java, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Shanghai, the Philippines and Korea. ... 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 moving and thought-provoking exploration of Dutch art and the impact that painting can have on life - and life on painting. Fabritius, blown up in Delft in 1654 after painting The Goldfinc... 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
This montage weaves together memories from Bergman's childhood and adulthood with all their subtle parallels. Film-like, dream-like and beautifully crafted, this self-portrait is startlingly... read more
A witness to the Beslan massacre, the former Moscow correspondent sought to ease his soul and deepen his understanding of the roots of violence by taking a 1000-mile walk along the political... read more
The Chinese-born novelist moved to Britain and then to the US. Her memoir glints with her fascination with the West as well as her nostalgia for the East.
The author and her brother spent a decade at sea; at sixteen she made it ashore in New Zealand, effectively abandoned by her parents. A startling and riveting memoir.
The author fled Iraq with his family to Israel in 1950: this personal narrative of emigration also contends with the repercussions of Zionism for an Arab-Jew.
After losing five family members in as many months, RH began to run. She also began to research the trailblazing, tenacious women who first did outdoor sports in the late 1800s - often in lo... read more
The extraordinary woman who wandered the world gathering herbal lore settled in a cabin in the New Forest for three years in the 1950s, where she raised her children.
This intensely lyrical and radical 'memoir' of the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland was written in the last years of WW2, but only published in 1977. The long-overlooked Modernist novelist an... read more