Biography Books > F Biography Books

Advantages: Lively and provocative account
Disadvantages: Strongly opinionated

As an ambitious young journalist in the 1960's, Janet Street Porter worked and socialised with many upcoming artists and designers of her generation in London. Street-Porter has maintained a high media profile for several years, appearing on arts shows and presenting her own series - she once did one on long distance walking. She has worked as Editor of the Independent on Sunday, and still contributes a regular column for the Independent. You may ...
...still setting the world to rights. Recently she has become known for TV reality shows - forgive me if I did not mention this first, but its been a while since I actually watched any. She says, that she prefers to mix the serious stuff in with the 'froth'. This is the second volume of her life story. I had not read the first one, 'Baggage', and both volumes have had a somewhat mixed reception. It is an eclectic mix of memoir with a rather brief attempt ... Read review

Advantages: Inspirational, Emotional account of personal desire versus governmental struggles
Disadvantages: None, for the book itself

...biography of the author's transition from a member of a remote Burmese Village Tribe to an English Student at Cambridge University UK. The author was born in Burma in 1967 and spent the first 22 years of his life there, before moving to Cambridge in 1989, after a meeting with a Cambridge don a year earlier. The coincidences and likelihood of such a meeting to happen in the way it did (and as the reader will learn as the story unfolds) seem almost ...
...such an existence so removed from Western society. The Padaung tribe are an extremely remote tribe and their beliefs are founded completely in ghosts and folklore, never having experienced any kind of modern living. The tribal women are noted for their elongated ‘giraffe’ necks, possibly an optical illusion due to their tradition of wearing many rings around their necks and their arms. Pascal is somewhat of a celebrity in his village and in his family, ... Read review

Advantages: Funny, emotional, gripping, interesting
Disadvantages: none!

...about. However I also love Frank Skinner and what. wit him coming from te black country as well (also a cross I have to bare!) then it was a definite must read on my list! This is a totally honest book as honest as you can get, although, pleasingly, I didn't find it full of cringe-worthy moments, just funny and sometimes touching moments which kept me glued to the book all the way through. Frank goes into so much detail about growing up in Oldbury ... Read review

Advantages: A good read and an insight into the WWE
Disadvantages: As its backed by WWE some things are hid

Mick Foley is one of the gods of wrestling. This book brings you in and out of the ring, up and down the entrance mat and allows you to see Mick's side of wrestling. Although this book is endorced by the WWE, Mick does talk about ECW, WCW, NWA and the list goes on. He explains how the wrestling community is alot closer than those who live around you. He is not worried about spilling the beans on certain wrestlers, who you know he hates with passion. ...
...was a good wrestler and who was just a faker. You may be well surprised when you read who he thinks is just a chancer. And the chancer is still chanceing it at the moment, so he must have some ability, but you'll have to read the book to find out who it is. This is a good read, and if you would like to find out about what goes on behind the stage, pick this one up and give it ago. ... Read review

Advantages: A compelling factual read
Disadvantages: Slight repetition in parts

...product of a very mundane family with only a minimal number of skeletons in our closets, I was hooked and ordered the title immediately. The uncovering of this fact led Lanchester to a realisation of how little he actually knew about his parents’ lives and to a recognition that his upbringing had been permeated by his mother’s “ enquiry suppression field, in which there were things you couldn’t ask, psychic places you couldn’t go and wishes you ...
...hidden areas by means of family archival documents, interviews with family members and historical research makes for fascinating reading. Lanchester traces his mother, Julia’s life from her Irish roots as the eldest of eight in a comparatively poor family in County Mayo, though her education to her entry as a postulant into a Roman Catholic order, her subsequent leaving of that order and training as a nurse , followed by her re-entry into holy orders ... Read review