Biography: arts & entertainment

In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping. One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner with an Italian name, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. The three men's lives play out a...

What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation? Is history an excuse? What makes women artists monstrous? And what should we do with beauty, and with our un...

Idiosyncratic. Iconoclastic. Acerbic. Hilarious. The influence of Tom Hibbert's music writing across print, radio, TV and podcasts is incomparable. From his genre-defining work at Smash Hits to his 'Who the Hell ... ?' profiles for Q magazine and beyond, this book brings together many of Hibbert'...

Timothy West and Prunella Scales are - first and foremost - actors. But their finest roles, it turns out, have always been as husband and wife! Timothy West charts the course of their lives, from the years before they met, to their secret courting and marriage. Diving into their journey to establ...

The definitive biography of the most successful female broadcaster of all time - Barbara Walters - a woman whose personal demons fueled an ambition that broke all the rules and finally gave women a permanent place on the air, written by bestselling author Susan Page.

There are few labels not attached to Aphra Behn - playwright, poet, a spy, a scarlet woman condemned for loose morals. And yet, for all her notoriety Aphra Behn is an enigma. Born in around 1640, her early life isn't well recorded and facts about her are continually disputed. Her birth name may h...

Will Gompertz takes us into the minds of artists - from contemporary stars to old masters, the well-known to the lesser-so, and from around the world - to show us how to look and experience the world with their heightened awareness.

Jimi Hendrix, Princess Diana and Syria's Asma Al-Assad rub shoulders with Auden, Eliot and Shelley - and with the Trouser Thief Clive met during ten long weeks locked up in a closed psychiatric ward - in this offbeat and affectionate poetic biography. Since 2010, when Clive was told he had three ...

In this gripping narrative, Hermione Lee builds a unique portrait of one of our greatest playwrights. Her biography is remarkable for its unprecedented access to private papers, diaries and letters, and for the countless interviews it draws on. Meticulously researched, it tracks its subject from ...

Tupac Shakur is one of the greatest and most controversial artists of all time. More than a quarter of a century after his tragic death in 1996 at the age of just twenty-five, he continues to be one of the most misunderstood, complicated and prolific figures in modern history. Tupac's unapologeti...