Biography: literary

'There are certain women,' Truman Capote wrote, 'who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.' These women captivated and enchanted Capote - he befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. From Barbara 'Babe' Paley to Lee Radziwill (Jac...

Here is an engrossing biography of the man whose writings about 1930s Berlin made him famous. Christopher Isherwood rejected the life he was born to and set out to make a different one. Heir to an English estate, he flunked out of university, moved to Berlin, was driven through Europe by the Nazi...

This is the extraordinary story of Elisabeth Beresford, creator of 'The Wombles', the furry, fun-loving recyclers of rubbish which became a children's publishing and television sensation in the 1970s.

The story of the creators of Winnie the Pooh.

Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, 'The Talented Mr Ripley' and 'Strangers on a Train', Patricia Highsmith is lauded as one of the great modern writers. The triangular relationship between Highsmith's lesbianism, her fraught personality - by parts self-destructive an...

Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, 'The Talented Mr Ripley' and 'Strangers on a Train', Patricia Highsmith is lauded as one of the great modern writers. The triangular relationship between Highsmith's lesbianism, her fraught personality - by parts self-destructive an...

For centuries, being a ballerina has been synonymous with being beautiful, thin, obedient and feminine. It is the crucible of womanhood, together with the harassment, physical abuse and eating disorders endemic at top schools. Can we abide this in a post #MeToo world? Weaving together her own tim...

This is a collection of specially commissioned essays celebrating Dylan Thomas's life and work, and exploring his lasting legacy. Edited by his granddaughter, Hannah Ellis, the book is arranged thematically and includes a wealth of material, including essays from noted biographers such as David T...

Along with Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas is by any reckoning a major first world war poet. A war poet is not one who chooses to commemorate or celebrate a war, but one who reacts against having a war thrust upon him. His great friend Robert Frost wrote 'His poetry is so very brave, so u...

This is the second volume of Robert Crawford's magisterial biography of the revolutionary modernist, visionary poet and troubled man, T.S. Eliot. It tells the story of the mature Eliot, his years as a world-renowned writer and intellectual, and his troubled interior life.