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A new biography gets closer than most to understanding what makes the elusive politician tick
Catherine Coldstream’s intense memoir of a grieving daughter’s journey from agnostic to anchorite reads like a thriller
Julian Borger tells the remarkable story of how his father and seven other Viennese children were adopted via newspaper classifieds
‘The Physics of Sorrow’ and ‘The Story Smuggler’ by the International Booker winner are wistfully revealing about life in post-Communist Bulgaria
How would one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers handle the challenges of today? A new biography offers intriguing answers
A riveting account tracks a snakes-and-ladders path, from tough beginnings in Communist Hungary to paving the way for Covid vaccines
Clair Wills’s story of a family discovery is compelling not just on a personal level but as a vignette of recent Irish history
The anti-colonial militant is a major figure for activists, but controversy over his calls for revolutionary violence remains
Rather than rejecting monogamy outright, this thoughtful foray into free love asks if polyamory can enrich a couple’s relationship
An English eccentric’s account of life as a perennial traveller and perpetual outsider
Scott Eyman’s compelling, empathetic account traces Charlie Chaplin’s fall from grace in postwar America
This splendid biography of ‘the last conservative’ is also an insightful history of 20th-century thinking
Daniel Schulman’s richly detailed chronicle is a timely corrective to historical distortions that have helped feed antisemitism
Memoirs of the socialites and swells of an earlier era offer perfect festive reading — without today’s celebrity spin
The Path to Paradise digs deep into a man whose achievements are almost too much for one life — never mind one book
Simon Kuper selects his must-read titles
‘Fire Weather’ named winner of UK’s leading award for non-fiction at ceremony in London
Carl Wilkinson selects his must-read titles
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney selects his must-read titles
The latest biographical documentary to land on the streaming service has the usual carefully managed narrative
The Rwandan writer playfully explores storytelling and colonialism
The biographer returns to the media mogul and finds a once-powerful figure shaded by ‘doubt, ambivalence, regret’
The English novelist’s final book blends a memoir of his convalescence in America with the story of his parents’ WWII romance
A heartfelt memoir on being single, living alone and the existential experience of loneliness
Dismissed by Virginia Woolf as ‘an elf’, the prolific 17th-century poet and playwright is given a more positive appraisal in a new biography
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