LIVES WELL LIVED? A pick from biography and memoir

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