‘The best way of lengthening out the rest of our days, old chap, is to finish off our old things’, said the ageing William Morris to his oldest friend and collaborator Edward Burne-Jones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Burne-Jones). Both were in their sixties; neither would see out the 1890s. Burne-Jones had been designing tapestries and stained glass – sometimes at the rate of […]
The Last Pre-Raphaelite Read More »
‘If my story were ever to be written down truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone’, wrote Henri Matisse. It is hard to believe today that Matisse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matisse and http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/henri-matisse), whose exhibitions draw huge crowds worldwide, was once almost universally reviled and ridiculed. His response was neither to protest nor to retreat; he simply
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A fascinating account of piracy, betrayal, and raw survival on the high seas and dry land, Selkirk’s Island rediscovers the amazing tale of an eighteenth-century legend. Born a poor Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk signed with William Dampier, a pirate who was as famous for his self-promotion as for his naval success, on an ill-fated quest to
Contemporaries called Spinoza ‘Satan incarnate’ and ‘the most impious atheist who ever lived upon face of the earth’. But he is now revered as one of the greatest philosophers since Plato, as the political theorist who first enunciated the general principles for a secular democratic society, and in many ways a modern saint. Baruch, later
Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein Read More »
Most autobiographies cover the main events of a life with the reader often left with only glimpses of the inner life of the author. Carl Jung’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung) autobiographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections (first English translation 1963), focuses on the great psychologist’s spiritual and intellectual awakenings. The descriptions of his visions, dreams and fantasies, which he considered his
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Rosalind K. Marshall’s (http://www.debretts.com/people/biographies/browse/m/20165/Rosalind%20Kay+MARSHALL.aspx) Queen of Scots, first published in 1986, quickly established itself as a popular account of Mary, the most romantic and tragic of all Scotland’s monarchs. Her dramatic tale owes its immediacy and power to the fact that it is closely based throughout on the original sixteenth-century sources, and tells the story using, wherever
This is the definitive biography of one of the Christian Church’s most prominent figures. St. Augustine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Augustine) was born in A.D. 354 in the town of Thagaste in North Africa to a pagan father and a Christian mother. From these inauspicious beginnings, he would eventually become one of the most influential thinkers in the history of the
Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown Read More »
In this magnificent biography by Jon Meacham (http://www.jonmeacham.com/about/), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (2012) gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars
Anthony (‘A. C.’) Grayling gives us a scholarly yet accessible portrait of this most passionate writer who was also a philosopher, painter, critic, and radical political thinker – William Hazlitt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hazlitt). The life of William Hazlitt is set in the context of its disturbed times, showing how his work and life interpret each other. The
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Born in 1933 in Stockport, Cheshire, Bakewell made it to Newnham College Cambridge where she enjoyed glittering times with Jonathan Miller, Michael Frayn and Peter Hall. Thereupon she threw herself into the swinging sixties in London and has become a celebrated TV presenter. She is perhaps best remembered for presenting the serious documentay programme ‘The
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In 1914 Vera Brittain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Brittain) was 21 years old, and an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford. This is the memoir of an upper middle class woman who volunteers to become a nurse in World War 1, and finds her attitudes to herself and her society completely changed. Yet this is not just her story. As she herself writes,
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Brilliant, witty and zestful memoirs from this writer and TV presenter. Full of acute analyses. Originally published 2001. 560 pages in Picador paperback edition. ISBN 978-0330418812
This is a multi-award winning biography of the poet who voiced the concerns of the Victorian era. Tennyson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennyson) was Poet Laureate for an astonishing 42 years. Originally published 1980. To go with this, listen to the BBC Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ 45 minute episode on Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Available from the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0124pnq
Some autobiographies are enjoyed for the content of their revelations, others for their style and quality of prose in which they are executed. Speak, Memory (1967) by Russian emigre Vladimir Nabokov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov) is certainly the latter. It offers a gorgeous and beguiling account of a pampered Russian childhood broken into fragments of exile and loss by revolutionary
