First published in 1957, Maurice Cranston’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Cranston) book is recognized as the definitive biography of John Locke (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_locke). It provides that rare combination of sound scholarship, a wealth and variety of original source material, and a lively, compelling narrative. This is required reading for all those fascinated by the ideas of Empiricism and Liberalism.   […]

Death is something that happens to other people: and hence, it might be inferred, the popularity of biography. Those whose lives are recorded die in the last chapter: the rest of us live for ever. The point was made by Lucretius in his long poem On the Nature of Things (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura), which was intended to

The definitive scholarly biography of Charlotte Bronte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB). Winifred Gerin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_Gerin) sticks as closely as possible to Charlotte Bronte’s own words, as found in her letters and other writings. A must read for all those captivated by the author of  Jane Eyre (1847). 656 pages in Oxford paperback edition ISBN 978-0198811527 Charlotte Bronte

The long-awaited literary biography of the supreme ‘poets’ poet’. John Clare (1793-1864, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clare) is the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self, but until now he has never been the subject of a comprehensive

In the winter of 1913, Edward Thomas’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_(poet)) life was drifting. He was a 34-year-old father of three stuck in an unsatisfying marriage. He had produced 20 books of biography and criticism, and more than 1,500 book reviews, most at high speed. Though The Times had described him as ‘the man with the keys to the Paradise

Albert Speer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer), Hitler’s pet architect and wartime armaments supremo, has always been regarded differently from the rest of the Fuhrer’s henchmen. The ragbag of embittered veterans and political terrorists, shadows of Hitler himself, had little in common with the respectable and prosperous Speer, too young to have fought in the First World War, too fastidious and

The last few years have seen a remarkable surge in studies of the Reformation period and this book by Diarmaid MacCulloch  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarmaid_MacCulloch and http://www.stx.ox.ac.uk/people/fellow/professor-diarmaid-macculloch) makes a further contribution, putting at the centre of the first half of the 16th century Thomas Cranmer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranmer), the archbishop with the beard who created the Church of England. Cranmer’s beard dominates