Biography Books > T Biography Books > 10 GBP to 14 GBP

Advantages: Unusual, moving story; loads of dry wit and humor; often thought-provoking, unique ideas; never boring.
Disadvantages: Absolutely none.

...I shouldn't have come, but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.” --Quentin Crisp, “The Naked Civil Servant” ----------------------------------- With his usual droll wit, Quentin Crisp, that famously eccentric Englishman and resident of New York City, thus described his birth in his wonderfully penned autobiography. So who was this chap Crisp, you ask, and what was he famous for? Well, he might have been the most amusing and ...
...been courage and/or foolishness of the supreme kind for him to do what he did as a young man: he wore makeup, scarves, flamboyant clothes, long, painted nails and colored hair and dared to step daintily out onto the streets of 1930s England, at a time when to admit one's homosexuality, much less to flaunt it, was almost an act of social and physical suicide. This 1968 autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant, covers his life story from his childhood, ... Read review

Advantages: Informative
Disadvantages: None

People have the impression of Gordon as an arrogant, foul mouthed chef. However, this is the persona he adopts to achieve his goals successfully, and this read highlights how he has got there. A follow on from Humble Pie, the book goes in to more depth on the business side of his life, where risks were taken to get where he is today. Lessons that he has learnt along the way are both informative and amusing. His plight to go from a well known UK ...
...What we do learn about Gordon is his passion to develop the people who have been most loyal to him. Angela Hartnett is mentioned a few times throughout the book, as it goes from him owning his first restaurant right through to his MNC Gordon Ramsay Holdings. Loyalty is shown to be a key factor in his life, and as he has progressed, so have the people who have helped him get there. A great read and very inspiring! ... Read review

Advantages: Well written, easy to read
Disadvantages: Nothing new, its all been written before

Madonna - love her or loathe her, it seems that everyone has an opinion about her. With a career that now spans over 25 years her rise to fame from the early days when she first arrived in New York, penniless but with huge ambitions has been well documented many times. Madonna - Queen of the world by Douglas Thompson could at first glance quite easily be dismissed as yet another regurgitated account of Madonna's rise to fame but from the sleeve notes ...
...that everyone claims to already know everything there is to know about. Madonna has given many interviews throughout her life. Usually these interviews are carefully timed to coincide with her latest project, be it a new album, movie, book or other project and the new image that compliments the project is always flaunted to its maximum effect. When it comes to being interviewed Madonna always calls the shots, so how can anyone really expect to know ... Read review

Advantages: A true life account of a terrible accident.
Disadvantages: You don't always get a happy ending in real life.

The book I will now review contains probably one of the worst nightmares any parent could anticipate, the fact is a biography detailing the entire scenario makes it even more difficult and heart wrenching to read. The book I will now review is "Shattered", by Mavis Marsh and ghost written by Andrew Crofts. The book starts with the awful words of the doctor that has done the pre assessment on Mavis's son Mathew - "Your son will be a cabbage for ...
...a vegetable, or what-ever you want to call him". From that awful statement the story goes back to Mavis's ( the mother, writer and teller of this somewhat frightening story), childhood, first detailing her parents life, from jobs and home life, through to her father serving in the war and the untold horrors he had witnessed. From this she went on to her school life, until reading further into the book I never quite understood the purpose for all ... Read review

Advantages: vivid and real
Disadvantages: none

"Cider with Rosie" has to be one of my most memorable, poignant and haunting reads. I discovered it when I was 16 in an English class whilst learning about descriptive writing and use of imagery. I didn't have to read it, I was just shown an example of his work, but it lured me in hook line and sinker and I couldn't put the book down. The book is an evocative memoir of his childhood growing up in a Cotswold village. He captures the time and the ...
...in such a manner that conveys reality - he paints a picture with his words and he excels in this art. I think the opening paragraph is simply magical, "I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began. The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each ... Read review