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. To go with this, listen to the BBC Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ 45 minute episode on Tennyson’s great poem In Memoriam. Available from the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0124pnq With
Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart by Robert Bernard Martin Read More »
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
