Biography: writers

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAY MCINERNEYJohn Cheever's letters offer a tantalising glimpse into the life of a writer.

The remarkable transformation of Orwell from journeyman writer to towering iconIs George Orwell the most influential writer who ever lived?

Peeling the Onion is a searingly honest account of Grass' modest upbringing in Danzig, his time as a boy soldier fighting the Russians, and the writing of his masterpiece, The Tin Drum, in Paris.

A delightful insight into the formation of an artist who would become one of the world's most respected writers.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION'Vivid and empowering' GILLIAN ANDERSON'A stunning book' BERNARDINE EVARISTO'Dazzling' TARA WESTOVER'A story about hope, imagination and resilience'GUARDIANAn award-winning, inspiring memoir of family, education and resilience.

Christopher Fowler's memoir captures life in suburban London as it has rarely been seen: through the eyes of a lonely boy who spends his days between the library and the cinema, devouring novels, comics, cereal packets - anything that might reveal a story.

When James Matthew Barrie died, in 1937, his funeral was an occasion for national mourning.

In the Middle Ages, mules were used to transport goods across Britain.

In 1944, at the age of five, William Graves was taken from England to the delightful mountain village of Deya in Majorca, where his father - the poet Robert Graves - had returned with his new family to the place he had lived with Laura Riding before the war.

Collected Essays contains nearly eighty essays, reviews and occasional pieces composed between novels, plays and travel books over four prolific decades.

Literature Book of the Year, Sunday Times'Terrific' Guardian'Enthralling' Spectator'Magisterial' Daily Telegraph'Unsurpassable' New York Review of BooksBy the time Herzog was published in 1964, Saul Bellow was probably the most acclaimed novelist in America, described in later years by the critic James Wood as the greatest writer of American prose in the twentieth century.

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography 2014Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best BiographyNew York Times Book Review s 10 Best Books of the YearPenelope Fitzgerald (1916 2000) was a great English writer, who would never have described herself in such grand terms.

Orwell has become one of the most potent and symbolic figures in western political thought.

A moving, unforgettable memoir of two lost men: a father and his child.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY RACHEL COOKEReading Shaking a Leg is like spending time with the funniest, wisest friend you ve ever had; a person whose breadth of interest ranges from food to feminism to science fiction, and everything in between; a person with an entirely unpredictable train of thought but whose exuberance, knowledge and insight sweeps you along.

Each house, like each place, has its own topography, its own lore.

FROM THE ONE-OF-A-KIND IMAGINATION THAT BROUGHT US SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 AND CAT'S CRADLE 'Kurt Vonnegut is either the funniest serious writer around or the most serious funny writer' Los Angeles Times Book Review An 'autobiographical collage' of speeches, stories and essays, in Palm Sunday, Kurt Vonnegut writes beguilingly about everything from country music to George Bush, his favourite comedians to his mother's midnight mania, and bittersweet tributes to a dead best friend and a dead marriage.

With superb skill and feeling, Graham Greene retraces the experiences and encounters of his extraordinary life.

In 1938 Graham Greene was commissioned to visit Mexico to discover the state of the country and its people in the aftermath of the brutal anti-clerical purges of President Calles.

Graham Greene's 'long journey through time' began in 1904, when he was born into a tribe of Greenes based in Berkhamstead at the public school where his father was headmaster.

"e;It's hard to see how anyone is ever going to better this User's Manual to the life of Georges Perec"e; - Gilbert Adair, Sunday TimesWinner of the Prix Goncourt for Biography, 1994George Perec (1936-82) was one of the most significant European writers of the twentieth century and undoubtedly the most versatile and innovative writer of his generation.

The second volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon.

A raw, explicit memoir as high-intensity and riveting as any of Ellroy's novels.

Joseph Conrad's impact has been so profound and far-reaching that, eighty years after his death, he remains an essential cultural reference point.

He was born in the year Dr Johnson died, and died in the year A.

At the time of his death at the age of 95, Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) was the most famous historian in the world.

'[A] deeply considered and stimulating book, informed throughout by the author's intimate knowledge of the literature and society of Shakespeare's age.

From Barnardo boy to original virgin soldier; from apprentice journalist in London's Fleet Street to famous novelist.

Robert Hughes, one of the most illuminating minds ever to have taken on the subjects of art and culture, uses his same critical abilities to give us a brutally intimate account of his early life, up until the time he quit Australia for the United States.

As the creator of Sherlock Holmes, 'the world's most famous man who never was', Arthur Conan Doyle remains one of our favourite writers; his work is read with affection - and sometimes obsession - the world over.

In the summer of 1941, as the Germans invade Russia, newspaper reporter Vasily Grossman is swept to the frontlines, witnessing some of the most savage atrocities in Russian history.

Bruce Chatwin's death in 1989 brought a meteoric career to an abrupt end, since he burst onto the literary scene in 1977 with his first book, In Patagonia.

Yet Being Someone Other is the most revealing book that Laurens van der Post wrote about his extraordinary and eventful life, and the most far-reaching; it is a distillation of the experiences that have moved him at the deepest level of the imagination and made him the exceptional person and writer he was.

Explorer, novelist, writer and film-maker, Sir Laurens van der Post was one of the most influential figures of our era.

Presented together now for the first time, Laurens van der Post's collected writings will reveal as never before the fullness of his perceptive, wise and remarkably consistent vision.

The classic evocative tale of an idyllic childhood in the English countryside Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change.

In this delightful sequel to Peeling the Onion, G nter Grass writes in the voices of his eight children as they record memories of their childhoods, of growing up, of their father, who was always at work on a new book, always at the margins of their lives.

Hermione Lee sees Virginia Woolf afresh, in her historical setting and as a vital figure for our times.

As read on BBC Radio 4Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography for A Strange Eventful History and winner of the Lifetime Services to Biography Award.

Sartre's powerful political passions were united with a memorable literary gift, placing him foremost among the novelists, as well as the philosophers, of our time.

'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.

Leslie Garis's grandparents, Howard and Lillian Garis, were, from the turn of the century to the 1950s, phenomenally productive (and incredibly popular) authors of books for children.

If you love Georgette Heyer, 'the queen of Regency romance', this is a must-read: the definitive guide to the sparkling world of Georgette Heyer's celebrated novels, which are currently being reissued.

John Griffith London (1876 - 1916), commonly known as Jack London, was an American journalist, social activist, and novelist.

PERFECT for fans of Roald Dahl.

In 1918, the RAF was established as the world's first independent air force.

When he was three, in the early 1970s, Benjamin Anastas found himself in his mother's fringe-therapy group in Massachusetts, a sign around his neck: Too Good to Be True.

A memoir about home and belonging, from the author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS'A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' BARACK OBAMAMaya Angelou's seven volumes of autobiography, beginning with I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer.

The book opens and we are inside the wave: thirty feet high, moving at twenty-five mph, racing two miles inland.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' DAILY TELEGRAPH'Miss du Maurier has brought to the art of the biography the narrative urgency' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW ' .