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Features | Reviews Features
Sylvia's mother said...
Sylvia Smith is 56, unknown, unmarried, unemployed and has just published the story of her uneventful life. Kate Kellaway meets the unlikely author tipped to be one of this year's bestsellersA life more ordinary
Sylvia Smith claims to be a lousy writer, she hates descriptive stories and nothing much happens in her autobiography. So how come a fashionable publisher has snapped up her book? Alex Clark investigates
Read an extract from Sylvia Smith's memoir A lost childhood
She cared for her semi-paralysed mother at six and was orphaned at 10. Then it got worse. Markie Robson-Scott meets the author of the bestselling memoir Blackbird My life as a story
Claire Armitstead on the rise and rise of the memoir Empathy with the devil
What drives someone to batter his wife to death, shoot his son and daughter, then have lunch with his parents before killing them too? Emmanuel Carrère spent seven years finding out Perverting De Sade
The infamous Marquis comes to the screen next Friday in Quills. But, explains Neil Schaeffer, his biographer, he was much more complex than the film shows, intent on testing the limits of his time The soul man was born to sing. But not to write …
Burhan Wazir finds Al Green's Take Me To The River a flawed read The agony and the ecstasy
Our cult of biography is rooted in the self-absorption of the romantics, argues John Mullan Consul yourself
Nicholas Lezard admires the witty reports of literary diplomat Eça de Queiros Atlas's Bellow: masterpiece or muck-raking?
Stephen Moss assesses the critical reaction to James Atlas's ambiguous biography of America's great man of letters, Saul Bellow Knowing all the right people
Biographer Artemis Cooper explains her network to John Cunningham. Flowers of despair
Essayist William Hazlitt was driven to the brink of madness by his unrequited love for a younger woman. But as AC Grayling argues in his new book, it spurred him on to his most brilliant work New information about aunts
Claire Tomalin tells Nicholas Wroe why she gave up poetry for biography Remainders of the day
Anthea Turner's much-hyped autobiography sold just 451 copies in its first week - prompting her publishers to censor sales figures. But she's not alone in such failure. Sally Weale on the books that bomb. My inspiration: Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin, winner of the Whitbread Prize for her biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, remembers the teachers who inspired her Written on the body
Terry Eagleton on the inarticulate beauty of David Beckham's My World Life's great game
Henry Blofeld's cricket commentaries have captivated and irritated listeners in equal measure. But is he really as bufferish as he sounds on air? Stephen Moss meets the last of the Test Match Special eccentrics. Maggie and me
Lady Thatcher turns 75 this week. Her biographer Hugo Young, who shares her birthday (but little else), reflects on an improbable relationship Sitting pretty
He's got it all - fame, money and talent. But there's much more to David Beckham than that. He talks to Ian Ridley about fatherhood, Fergie - and how terrace taunts brought him to the brink Reviews
Dinner with Carol
Carol Shields's novel approach to Jane Austen dismays Frances WilsonWeird science
Lisa Jardine meets an Elizabethan eccentric in Dr Simon Forman: A Most Notorious Physician by Judith Cook, and The Notorious Astrological Physician of London by Barbara Howard Traister Jane Austen, this is your life
...again. But Carol Shields's short study of the author is a welcome and sensitive addition to the canon Mind your language
David Sedaris unleashes a second volley of pithy one-liners in the continuation of his life story, Me Talk Pretty One Day This too, too sullied flesh
Sean O'Brien on The Satyr, by Cephas Goldsworthy - a new biography of Rochester, the seventeenth-century rock-star poet You can call me Al
Soul man, preacher man - Ian Sansom explores the many sides of Al Green in Take Me to the River, by Al Green with Davin Seay Matter of life and death
Julie Myerson takes issue with Tiger's Eye by Inga Clendinnen, another example of the current fad for sick lit With Wittgenstein at the end of the world
George Steiner on a discreet jewel: the account of Wittgenstein's visits to Ireland in Philosophical Investigations by Richard Wall Wuthering on and on
Kasia Boddy on a witty deconstruction of Brontëmania in Lucasta Miller's The Brontë Myth Rake and ruin
Rochester's irregular life is poorly served by Cephas Goldsworthy in The Satyr Doctor death
Chris Petit on a French tragedy too bizarre for fiction, Emmanuel Carrère's The Adversary: A True Story of Murder and Deception Call to arms
Peter Lennon on David Macey's biography of Frantz Fanon, Algeria's hero End of the entente cordiale
Writer's block? Helen Stevenson's answer is to live in France and write Instructions for Visitors, finds Stephen Romer Painted ladies
Vera Rule on the artful society dames in Infinite Variety by Ryersson and Yaccarino and La Divina Comtesse by Pierre Apraxine A ticket to ride, a war to be fought
Douglas Brinkley tells the story of the life of Rosa Parks, the 'mother of the civil rights movement', in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory The long goodnight
Chris Petit reads the mournful, insomniac letters in The Raymond Chandler Papers Radical cheek
Michael Foot celebrates AC Grayling's account of Hazlitt's revolutionary gusto, The Quarrel of the Age Sweetness and fright
Alfred Hickling on Miranda Seymour biography of Mary Shelley Magnum enforcer
He writes like a gunslinger, but he's really a disillusioned dreamer. Fear and Loathing in America is the second volume of Hunter S Thompson's letters Just call him an old Romantic
William Hazlitt liked things with 'gusto'. Would AC Grayling's story of his life and times, The Quarrel of the Age, have come up to scratch? Movers and shapers
Shlomo Barer's cultural history of the 19th century, The Doctors of Revolution, reads like a novel Poet, maniac - and caravan designer
Mark Ford strikes an impeccable balance between the life and work of the poet Raymond Roussel A volcanic fairy
Frances Wilson meets Byron's scandalous stalker in Susan Normington's biography of Lady Caroline Lamb Glorious freaks
Stephen Romer hails the enigma of Raymond Roussel in Mark Ford's biography A devil in disguise
Robert Macfarlane on My Goodness: A Cynic's Shortlived Search for Redemption by Joe Queenan, a sneering critic's quest for redemption that doesn't last long Long, frank and forlorn goodbye
Robert McCrum looks at The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-Fiction, edited by Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane Battle for Britain
Hywel Williams learns why Keynes had a bad war from Robert Skidelsky's John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain 1937-46 Give him enough Rope
Peter Conrad's dazzling new study of Alfred Hitchcock, The Hitchcock Murders, is as tricky as its subject Creative clowns
Jad Adams goes in search of Bohemia, and finds Satan in Elizabeth Wilson's The Glamorous Outcasts and Martin Booth's biography of Aleister Crowley Portly poses
Chris Petit weighs up the Hitchcock legacy in Peter Conrad's The Hitchcock Murders Reading the label
Keith Cameron on David Cavanagh's Creation Records story - My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize Memento Mortimer
John Mortimer's take on growing old, The Summer of a Dormouse, shows him as witty as ever The loyal hunt of the son
Ken Wiwa spent 26 years running away from his father's struggle. In the Shadow of a Saint tells how he learnt to accept his inheritance Lechery and treachery
Woodrow Wyatt serves up another helping of betrayed confidences and vitriol in the third volume of his journals, but is it entertaining? Pick up a Partridge
Frances Partridge's diaries chronicle a century of conversation. And a bit of housework Beautiful music and dirty politics
John Dugdale on a biography of Berlioz by David Cairns and The Secret History of Pius XI by John Cornwell Forever young
Gaby Wood on the infantile appeal of Judy Garland in Gerald Clarke's biography, Get Happy The animator of worlds
Paul Binding on fairy-tale life and art in Jackie Wullschlager's biography of Hans Christian Andersen The unzipped ego
Hywel Williams charts the triumph of Saul Bellow in James Atlas's biography Was he human?
Phil Baker explores the weird world of Wyndham Lewis through Paul O'Keefe's biography, Some Sort of Genius, and Paul Edwards's Wyndam Lewis: Painter and Writer From a life of crime to watching the detectives
James Sallis's biography circles round the life of the novelist Chester Himes, but is his approach too clinical? Punch and Judy
Fed pep pills by her mother, given electric shocks by MGM. Gerald Clarke tells the story of Judy Garland's journey to self-destruction in Get Happy Saul's flaws writ large
Despite his best intentions, James Atlas can't find much to commend Saul Bellow Those were the days...
The Assassin's Cloak is a judicious selection from the diaries of the great, the good, the corrupt and the bitchy Read an extract
Dreaming up the Doctor
John Mullan sees how Boswell created our Johnson - and the idea of biography, in Adam Sisman's Boswell's Presumptuous Task First Lady of Camelot
Sarah Bradford's biography of Jackie O, America's Queen, shows Mrs Kennedy's gift, says Andrew Rissik Small press corner
Landor: A Biography of Walter Savage Landor, by Jean Field The success of failure
Nicholas Lezard on the autobiography of an intelligent pop star, Joe Jackson's A Cure for Gravity The original man who fell to earth
Oscar Wilde was a fin de siècle literary celebrity. The publication of his 1,500 extant letters makes the case for his status as a contemporary icon There once was an ugly duckling
Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales won him fame and wealth - but he probably died a virgin. Jackie Wullschlager tells the story of the life of the great storyteller Locket science it ain't
Russell Martin tells the story of a clump of hair that may have been taken from Beethoven's head in Beethoven's Hair. Fiona Maddocks would rather he hadn't Send more meringues
The Marquis de Sade's letters from prison are notable primarily for the lack of sex The original Wilde child
On Wilde's centenary, Neil Bartlett revisits Oscar in Barbara Belford's A Certain Genius - and meets Wilde's niece in Joan Schenkar's Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde Will you still read me?
Andrew Rissik wonders if the Beatles can throw light on their own legend with their joint book, The Beatles Anthology When Keynes was king
Robert Skidelsky brings his mammoth biography of John Maynard Keynes to a close with Fighting for Britain When he was good...
Juliet Barker's sympathetic and engaging biography gives a convincing portrait of the towering figure of William Wordsworth A booting for Bertie
AC Grayling defends Bertrand Russell from a biographical mugging by Ray Monk in Bertrand Russell 1921-70: The Ghost of Madness A marital aide
As if Diana hadn't suffered enough, along comes her man PD Jephson with his memoir Shadows of a Princess Connoisseur of class
Peter Bradshaw meets the younger Alan Clark in his latest autobiographical instalment Diaries: Into Politics Love letter to London
Peter Ackroyd anatomises the will of an unruly capital in London: the Biography Sorry Dad, Grandpa's on the sauce
Lorna Sage's childhood memoir, Bad Blood, tells how she was determined to break the rules and get away with it Was Frankenstein a fluke?
Miranda Seymour risks being buried under a mass of facts in her biography of Mary Shelly King's English
Jay Parini picks up writing tips from Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir Hoodwinked by Hitler
Ian Kershaw takes a dissembler at face value in Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis says John Lukacs Dirty deeds at the Dead Rat
Graham Robb pieces together the extraordinary story of the phenomenon that was Rimbaud
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