Biography: writers

The Letters of Kenneth Tynan- drama critic, talent snob, intellectual dandy, inveterate campaigner - provide a record of a soul: written between the ages of 11 and 53, they not only chart the extraordinary parabola of his career but show the constancy of his quest for grace, style and effortless wit.

Candia McWilliam had just joined the judging panel of the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2006 when she started to lose her sight.

You're about to turn thirty, all your friends are getting engaged and pregnant - and your body-clock is ticking.

THIRTY YEARS AFTER THE FEMALE EUNUCH, GERMAINE GREER RETURNS TO THE SUBJECT OF FEMINISM, WITH THE BOOK SHE VOWED SHE WOULD NEVER WRITE.

'You're Joseph Heller's daughter?

Bowen's Court describes the history of one Anglo-Irish family in County Cork from the Cromwellian settlement until 1959, when Elizabeth Bowen was forced to sell the family house she loved.

John Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century.

'Utterly compulsive' Daily Telegraph'A gripping gothic read' Sarah Hall, Guardian'So seductive .

Though born into privilege and inheriting a fortune, Willie Donaldson ended up dying alone in a seedy rented flat, his computer still logged on to a lesbian porn site.

In David Lodge's last novel, Thinks.

'The next Bill Bryson.

A fascinating account of the life of one of the century's great eccentrics - the brilliant Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Like all poets, inspired by death, Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or cremate them and to tend to their families in a small Michigan town where he serves as the funeral director.

The facts of life and death remain the same.

In February of 1970, Thomas Lynch, aged twenty-one, bought a one-way ticket to Ireland.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER'She'd been intimately his, and he hers, for twenty-seven years - which were his final twenty-seven years.

'If men could see us as we really are, they would be amazed', wrote Charlotte Bront , the outwardly conventional parson's daughter who had rarely met any men beyond those of the church or classroom by the time Jane Eyre was published in 1847.

Fanny Burney (1752-1840) is best known as the author of EVELINA, one of the most engaging novels of the eighteenth century.

In a memoir as vivid and unpredictable as any novel we follow Roger Garfitt on his journey from stable boy to jazz dancer, from Oxford dandy to Sixties drop-out.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SIMON CALLOWIn 1939, as Europe approaches war, Isherwood, an instinctive pacifist, travels west to California, seeking a new set of beliefs to replace the failed Leftism of the thirties.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JAMES FENTONSubtitled 'An education in the twenties', this work blends autobiography and fiction to describe the inner life of a writer evolving from precocious public school boy to Cambridge drop-out at large in London s Bohemia.

In this sequel to The Flame of Thika, Elspeth Huxley takes up her story after the family returns to Kenya after the First World War.

The emotional and gripping memoir from multi-million copy Sunday Times bestselling author of Never Look Back and A Sicilian Affair, perfect for fans of Cathy Glass and Lesley Pearse.

In the winter of 1849, Florence Nightingale was an unknown 29-year-old - beautiful, well-born and deeply unhappy.

In 1929, Christopher Isherwood leaves England on a one-way ticket to Berlin.

Maxine Hong Kingston, author of such seminal works as The Woman Warrior and China Men, is one of the most important American writers of her generation.

A critical discussion of Pound s poetry and an insightful analysis of his sources.

Christy Brown was born a victim of cerebral palsy.

In 1999 His Holiness The Dalai Lama published the bestselling Ancient Wisdom: Modern World, which addressed the question of ethics for the new millennium.

Jane Shutt is a down-to-earth Yorkshire woman who leads an extraordinary life as one of Britain's leading shamanic healers.

How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love?

The definitive biography of Daphne Du Maurier, one of history's greatest psychological thriller novelistsRebecca, published in 1938, brought its author instant international acclaim, capturing the popular imagination with its haunting atmosphere of suspense and mystery.

The distinguished poet, essayist and critic D.

These are Anthony Burgess's candid confessions: he was seduced at the age of nine by an older woman; whilst serving in Gibraltar in World War II he was thrown into jail on VE Day for calling Franco names; he once taught a group of Nazi socialites that the English equivalent of 'heil' was 'sod' and had them crying 'Sod Hitler'.

Margaret Forster presents the 'edited' diary of a woman, born in 1901, whose life spans the twentieth century.

A brilliant follow-up to Hidden Lives, Margaret Forster's most personal book yet takes up the story of her gritty, northern father, Arthur, intertwined with that of her sister-in-law, Marion, who died of cancer at almost half the age of the 96 year-old Arthur.

What do men run away from?

Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World is widely recognised to be the fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age.

Antonia White is best known for her masterpiece Frost in May, for having come back from Bedlam and madness, and for the public feud between her daughters over the editing of her diaries.

No modern philosopher has been more maligned and misunderstood or more cynically exploited than Friedrich Nietzsche.

A fascinating and wonderfully readable deconstruction of the countless myths that have grown up around the Bront s.

Auden's dedication as a writer was matched only by his commitment to challenging the received view of political and personal life.

John Cheever's journals reveal the inner life of this remarkable writer and the contradictions that drove him.

In a series of long essays, James Wood examines the connection between literature and religious belief, in a startlingly wide group of writers.

Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes).

Four questions consumed Shelley and coloured everything he wrote.

Anne Thackeray Ritchie, daughter of the author of Vanity Fair and step-aunt of Virginia Woolf, was also a fine writer.

Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of these remarkable memoirs, of which The Whole Hog now completes the Higgins Bestiary.

Victoria Glendinning provides a woman's view of Anthony Trollope, placing emphasis on family, particularly on his relationship with his mother.

This second volume of Christopher Isherwood's remarkable diaries opens on his fifty-sixth birthday as the fifties give way to the decade of social and sexual revolution.