Biography Books > H Biography Books > Hardcover > less than 5 GBP

Advantages: Well compiled, frank, moving and often amusing autobiography
Disadvantages: Sports fans will naturally find this more interesting but retains some general appeal.

...sums up this experience comes from the Irish Mail on Sunday. 'Whether you're a fan of the game or the man, his tale is a tale well worth reading. He may be a right b*****d, but miss him. Snooker misses him terribly.' Traditionally snooker in the United Kingdom has its roots entrenched in dingy, windowless halls where shifty characters rest their beer to play their shot, trying desperately to see the other end of the table through the thick clouds ...
...for their hedonistic exploits away from the baize. Without doubt Higgins, in his prime, was the wilder. It seems strange then that White, six times the losing finalist in the World Championships, put so little into his book regarding his career as a snooker great, choosing to allocate a disproportionate amount of pages to his binges and pub tales. Higgins, of course, has to include much of the same type of fare but to his credit he does a better ... Read review

Advantages: Intriguing insight into Clough as a manager and individual
Disadvantages: None

Duncan Hamilton was a journalist at the Nottingham Evening Post for over twenty years. He was to gain access to Brian Clough's Nottingham office on his very first day at the newspaper as a nervous sixteen year-old journalist. Brian Clough was one of the self-proclaimed giants of the English game who brought unlikely success to two of the most unfashionable English football clubs: Derby County and Nottingham Forest. Hamilton would become an integral ...
...journalists who would gain his trust. As such Hamilton was fortunate to have access to every aspect of the club, and he does a good job of painting a vivid portrait of Clough's eccentric personality and draws some light on his seemingly innate capacity as a manager who was always ready to put down his critics in the media and the boardroom. Hamilton was able to record all the successes, the misfortunes, the arguments and the drink that eventually ... 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