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Biography and memoir

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  • Friday, 24 June, 2022
    ObituaryMichel David-Weill
    Michel David-Weill, investment banker, 1932—2022

    The former Lazard chairman was known for his aversion to Wall Street fads and his ability to spot banking talent

  • Monday, 13 June, 2022
    The best books of the week
    Good Pop, Bad Pop — Jarvis Cocker’s lofty legacy

    The Pulp frontman’s attic clear-out makes for a droll, unlikely rock star memoir

  • Tuesday, 7 June, 2022
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    The Facemaker — how plastic surgery emerged from the horror of WWI

    Lindsey Fitzharris brings to life a neglected slice of medical history in the story of surgeon Harold Gillies and his work on disfigured soldiers

  • Tuesday, 31 May, 2022
    Review
    Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère — meditations on a breakdown

    The French writer documents with clarity and honesty his search for peace through eastern philosophy

  • Friday, 27 May, 2022
    Review
    Anna — how Wintour reached the pinnacle of her profession

    A nuanced portrait of the American Vogue editor fails to find the woman behind the mystery

  • Thursday, 26 May, 2022
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    The Last Days of Roger Federer — Geoff Dyer on age and creative decline

    This most knowing of writers could have written a fascinating study of late-life creation — a shame then, that it reads like disjointed musings

  • Tuesday, 17 May, 2022
    Review
    I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys — a clear-eyed portrait of a spiky contrarian

    Miranda Seymour’s sympathetic biography balances the torrid aspects of the writer’s life with insight into her literary influences

  • Thursday, 12 May, 2022
    ReviewFiction
    Privilege by Guinevere Glasfurd — the fight for freedom of expression

    Set during France’s Ancien Régime, this engaging novel harnesses our sympathies in a picaresque search for truth

  • Tuesday, 10 May, 2022
    Review
    The Palace Papers by Tina Brown — monarchy and misbehaviour

    This very readable account of an institution in flux is entertaining but light on revelations

  • Tuesday, 26 April, 2022
    Review
    Super-Infinite — the life and rhymes of John Donne

    Katherine Rundell’s remarkable biography captures the many selves of the extraordinarily gifted Elizabethan poet

  • Tuesday, 26 April, 2022
    Review
    Circus of Dreams — bright young things and booming book sales

    John Walsh’s celebrity-strewn memoir recalls a golden age of British publishing

  • Tuesday, 19 April, 2022
    Review
    Lost & Found — a luminescent meditation on love and grief

    Pulitzer Prizer-winner Kathryn Schulz’s memoir is a tender exploration of life, loss and the discovery of joy

  • Thursday, 7 April, 2022
    Review
    Dinner with Joseph Johnson — portrait of a revolutionary bookseller

    Daisy Hay brings to vivid life the publisher who befriended some of the 18th century’s most radical figures

  • Wednesday, 30 March, 2022
    FT Books Essay
    A Life of Picasso Volume IV — matador and minotaur

    This final, posthumous instalment by celebrated biographer John Richardson brings his gripping account of Picasso’s life up to 1943

  • Friday, 18 March, 2022
    Review
    Playing with Fire — Maria Yudina, the dissident pianist who survived Stalin

    Elizabeth Wilson’s meticulous biography examines the fame, friendships and extraordinary life of a fearless performer

  • Thursday, 17 March, 2022
    ReviewFiction
    Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra — poems and parenthood

    The Chilean writer’s affectionate satire of a teacher-turned-de facto stepdad is crisply translated by Megan McDowell

  • Monday, 14 March, 2022
    Review
    Truly Madly — the starry, stormy romance of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier

    Stephen Galloway’s account is a sympathetic portrait of the actors’ doomed marriage

  • Friday, 11 March, 2022
    ReviewFiction
    Fuccboi — masculine angst couched in expletives and bro-speak

    Does Sean Thor Conroe’s much-hyped debut really mark the arrival of a fresh voice?

  • Friday, 11 March, 2022
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    In the Margins, by Elena Ferrante — an ode to reading and writing

    A quartet of essays revisits the themes of the author’s Naples-based novels, and pays tribute to female strengths

  • Wednesday, 9 March, 2022
    Review
    Konstantin Paustovsky: the great Russian novelist who never won the Nobel

    A new translation of his epic The Story of a Life charts the rise of Bolshevism and events that still haunt us today

  • Friday, 4 March, 2022
    Review
    The Instant, by Amy Liptrot — swipe left

    The smartphone pervades this fragmentary Berlin-set memoir, which weaves between encounters with nature and failed efforts to find love

  • Tuesday, 22 February, 2022
    Review
    Bacon in Moscow — how a western artist stormed the Iron Curtain

    A fascinating memoir by curator James Birch on a defining moment in 1988 when Russia began to open up to the world after decades of self-isolation

  • Thursday, 17 February, 2022
    ReviewHistory books
    The Global Merchants by Joseph Sassoon — family fortunes

    The rise and fall of the dynasty, from opium traders to the British upper classes, has resonance for today’s super-rich

  • Tuesday, 15 February, 2022
    Review
    A Splendid Intelligence by Cathy Curtis — fearless critic Elizabeth Hardwick’s turbulent life

    The American novelist and hatchet-wielding literary commentator paid personally and publicly for her relationship with the poet Robert Lowell

  • Thursday, 10 February, 2022
    Review
    No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy by Mark Hodkinson — memoirs of a working-class bibliophile

    How a boy from a book-free home began a life-long love affair with reading

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