All articles in Biography & Memoir
12th March, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, Society & Culture
Vanity Fair and trailblazing on Savile Row
One day, we got a phone call from Vanity Fair saying the photographer Michael Roberts would like to shoot us on Savile Row. Michael was something of a trailblazer himself. Only a couple of years earlier, he had shot Vivienne Westwood impersonating Margaret Thatcher for the cover…
24th November, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, History, Special Editions
Solving the mystery of the Princes in the Tower
Following seven years of investigation and intelligence gathering, including archival searches around the world, Phase One of The Missing Princes Project is complete. The evidence uncovered suggests that both sons of Edward IV survived to fight for the English throne against Henr…
7th November, 2023 in Aviation, Biography & Memoir
What’s it like on the edge of space? The life of a Concorde pilot
Concorde was conceived in the 1950s, first flew in the 1960s and then took over 2.5million people to ‘the edge of space’ at twice the speed of sound for the rest of the 20th century. And into the 21st. Designed and developed by a team of far sighted British and French engineers,…
18th October, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Military
Nobody Lives Here: A wartime Jewish childhood
This memoir is a gripping and unusual account of a survivor of the Shoah in Holland. With impressively clear recall of his childhood and early teens – he was 11 at the outbreak of the war – Lex Lesgever writes of his years on the run and in hiding in Amsterdam and beyond. It is u…
16th August, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Meeting the mothers: The women who shaped iconic female authors
For an author, writing a biography is rather like a love affair; there is a brief encounter, a rapport and then over the next few years you develop an intimate relationship with your subject. My latest book Mothers of the Mind about the remarkable women who shaped Virginia Woolf,…
12th July, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Military, True Crime
Why did the United States allow the worst war criminal into America?
Until I began researching the story of the teenager who risked his life to bring the ‘Butcher of the Balkans’ to justice, I knew little of the atrocities committed in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia during the Second World War. I learned that I am far from alone. Most people I s…
18th April, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, History, Society & Culture
The Butcher of the Balkans: Andrija Artuković
Fate called Andrija Artuković out of exile, back to his homeland. It was time to start building the Croatia that he’d been fighting for his entire adult life. At the age of 41, Artuković was assigned an important post in Ante Pavelić’s new cabinet: Minister of the Interior, taske…
29th March, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Local & Family History
My Disappearing Uncle: A scattered family history
Among the assortment of things I’d inherited from the ancestors – the big forehead, height, double-jointed fingers, a tendency to sadness, a cupboard full of tins and the certainty of belonging to more than one place (or was it no place at all?) – stories were everywhere. There…
28th March, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Society & Culture, Women in History
Behind Mabel’s War: Beyond the Blitz
All wars devastate the lives of ordinary people. Death and glory linger on the battlefields while many millions at home suffer the pain of fear, anxiety and dread. As a war reporter, I have witnessed a great deal of anguish in the aftermath of conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and L…
23rd September, 2022 in Biography & Memoir, History, Women in History
The life of Kate Greenaway (1846-1901)
Once a household name around the globe, the artist and author Kate Greenaway has long since slipped into relative obscurity. Famous for her quaint drawings of mittened and bonneted girls, Kate depicted a rose-tinted view of childhood in days gone by, capturing nostalgic innocence…
22nd September, 2022 in Biography & Memoir, Society & Culture
Riotous Assembly: The Hypocrites Club
‘The stamping ground of half my Oxford life and the source of friendships still warm today.’ – Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning, 1964 On the evening of 8 March 1924, a young nun was seen by the porters of Balliol College, Oxford, trying to pass in just as the gates were due to clo…
9th September, 2022 in Biography & Memoir, History, Women in History
The reign of Queen Elizabeth II: A timeline
On 8 September 2022, Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth II had died at the age of 96, after reigning for 70 years. Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1952 at the age of 25, following the death of her father, King George VI. As the monarch of the United Kingdom and…