Collection: Biography

In this shimmering masterpiece of American nature writing, Edward Abbey ventures alone into the canyonlands of Moab, Utah, to work as a seasonal ranger for the United States National Park Service. Living out of a trailer, Abbey captures in rapt, poetic prose the landscape of the desert; a world o...

From challenging expectations as a bright and restless child of the Windrush generation to making history as the first elected Black female MP in the UK, Diane Abbott has seen it all. In this honest and moving memoir, Diane takes the reader through her incredible journey. She paints a vivid pictu...

After visiting Japan in 1902 and 1907 and discovering two magnificent cherry trees in the garden of his family home in Kent in 1919, Collingwood Ingram fell in love with cherry blossoms, and dedicated much of his life to their cultivation and preservation. On a 1926 trip to Japan to search for ne...

On the 14th of August 1941, a Polish monk named Maximilian Maria Kolbe was murdered in Auschwitz. Kolbe's life had been remarkable. Fiercely intelligent and driven, he founded a movement of Catholicism and spent several years in Nagasaki, ministering to the 'hidden Christians' who had emerged aft...

Here is an extraordinarily moving and candid memoir from the woman best known as Hillary Clinton's right hand and Anthony Weiner's wife - a deeply compelling figure, long in the headlines, who's never told her own story.

This is a self help book like no other. Because you are not helping yourself, James Acaster is helping you. When James quit all forms of social media in 2019 he felt like he'd been born anew, but he was worried he'd suffer withdrawal and get lured back online to compete in a never ending populari...

This is a self help book like no other. Because you are not helping yourself, James Acaster is helping you. When James quit all forms of social media in 2019 he felt like he'd been born anew, but he was worried he'd suffer withdrawal and get lured back online to compete in a never ending populari...

In the 1920s, the young J.R. Ackerley spent several months in India as the personal secretary to the maharajah of a small Indian principality. 'Hindoo Holiday' is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of 20th century travel literature.

Rosemary Ackland began writing her diary in 1945, aged just 15. For the next 58 years, through happiness and heartache, she continued to write. Even after the tragic onset of Motor Neurone disease, which left her mute and immobile, her diary was still an outlet in fact. This book weaves together ...

In this quick-witted portrait, Ackroyd reveals Hitchcock to be: a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances, just as Hitch did in his own films.

He was the very first icon of the silver screen, and is one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood, even a hundred years on from his first film. But what of the man behind the moustache? The director holding the camera as well as acting in front of it? Peter Ackroyd's new biography turns the...

Edgar Allan Poe served as a soldier and began his literary career composing verses modelled on Byron. Peter Ackroyd's biography of Poe opens with his end, his final days - no one knows what happened between the time when friends saw him off on the steam-boat to Baltimore and his discovery six day...

Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building, or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. In this captivating fusion of science, history and personal memoir, writer David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of...

In 2007 Christine Adams went to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow in Norfolk with some memorabilia from the house of her aunt, May Savidge. But this was only a tiny fraction of the house's contents, and only hinted at the facts of May Savidge's life. Now, Christine Adams tells how she discovered the fu...

Jad Adams offers a concise account of Gandhi's life: from his birth and upbringing in a small princely state in Gujarat during the high noon of the British Raj, to his assassination at the hands of a Hindu extremist in 1948 only months after the birth of the independent India which he himself had...

This book is about the life and work of Emmeline Pankhurst.

At London 2012, Nicola Adams made history. The flyweight boxer became the first woman ever to win an Olympic Gold medal for boxing. In Rio 2016, with the nation cheering her on, she did it all over again. Years of relentless training, fundraising and determination have seen Nicola battle through ...