The spark for this remarkable memoir was a scribbled list of paintings that belonged to the Parisian author's great-grandparents - Degas, Renoir, Monet, Tiepolo etc - of which she knew nothi... read more
Slim but far-reaching memoir of the author's brush with suicide, framed as the consequence of familial trauma and isolation. Superbly written, this bears honourable comparison with William S... read more
A riotous memoir of attempting to mount a Bacon exhibition in the last days of the USSR; apparatchiks, honey-traps, the KGB - has the author's liver ever recovered?
A memoir of life as a small girl in Rabindranath Tagore's famous cultural community in the 1930s, by one of India's foremost literary figures. Translated from the Bengali. (Originally due fo... read more
A memoir by the Egytian woman who set up an independent book shop with a friend and her sister in 2002 - ten years later it had grown to include ten shops and 150 employees. Full of the nois... read more
When the author's mother dies, leaving a strangely symbolic collection of everyday objects behind her, Wicha begins to sort through the belongings and constructs a minute, material history b... read more
Wry and robust memoir from the Conservative MP of - amongst other things - 'Plebgate' notoriety. Praised by voices on both sides of the political divide.
A spare and engaging chronicle of the summers spent in a small cabin on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland with her partner, who did the illustrations.
A hotchpotch of journal entries from the last seven years to do with living around Paris, surprisingly free of the angst found in much of her other writing.
He has been making documentaries in Westminster for fifty years, and filmed the last ten Prime Ministers. Here he shares insights and some of the confidences given to him by his subjects whe... read more
In February 1938 Georg Klaar, a Jewish lad of seventeen, went to his first ball in Vienna, staying until the band's last waltz. A month later came the Anschluss. The ensuing years brought ch... read more
A memoir by the cultural historian and Maltravers Herald Extraordinary, redhead and exultant non-driver, whose arms include three stags trippant. His book on James Wyatt is still the best; ... read more
In this inspired recreation of her parents' hopes and lives, MW has created a vivid memoir of post-war childhood and adventure in Cairo, Italy and London.
Those who read Clare's Something of His Art, about J S Bach, or The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal (or others) will know that Clare is a writer of exquisite sensibility and nuance. He i... read more
My theory and practice is to say yes to life and then I'll see how I manage along the way. Part memoir, part manifesto of a fiercely independent spirit; intelligent and lyrical.
The second volume of a beautifully published pair of LL's famous memoirs, in which the young man leaves his beloved village of Slad for London and then walks and busks his way around Spain.... read more
MS is an outstanding literary voice in contemporary Russia: here she creates a portrait of three Russian-Jewish generations sifted from the detritus in a late aunt's flat. This book is diff... read more
First of a beautifully published pair of LL's famous memoirs: in this we have his lyrical evocation of a childhood in rural England during the years after WW1. Lovely clothbound edition from... read more
A curator of fashion at the V&A for most of her working life, CW uses her experience and sensitivity to clothes to explore how, in her own family's life, the secrets of clothes measure out t... read more
The author's mother came from a Sikh family that fled the Punjab in Partition; later she moved to Berlin and Washington. A fine memoir of family whose identity and roots have been complicate... read more
The former Editor of the Financial Times (2005-2020) was scribbling away during the tech boom, the global financial crisis, the rise of China, Brexit, etc...
CC is the distinguished Australian publisher who founded Virago. Her forebear was transported for seven years for stealing a piece of hemp, but managed to prosper in Australia. He returned t... read more
An English translation of Ernaux's memoir about her father and life in small-town France, first published in 1984: a counterpart to 'A Woman's Story' published in English last year. Both are... read more
BA, aka Lady Black, has led "more colourful lives than the most exotic Cheshire Cat", quoth Sir Elton John. Trailed as a candid account of a fairly kaleidoscopic existence, from not-quite-ra... read more
Reading this 'novel' is like going to stay with an old uncle, one with lots of stories to tell but nobody to tell them to. Little Keith - as Hitchens used to call Amis - has been waiting for... read more