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Biography and memoir

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  • Wednesday, 7 June, 2023
    Review
    Sleeping on Islands — Andrew Motion reflects on a life in poetry

    The former poet laureate’s second memoir charts a brilliant career underpinned by his ability to network

  • Wednesday, 31 May, 2023
    The best books of the week
    Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile — a lament for a lost homeland

    From fleeing war and revolution to life as an émigré in the US, Fiona Maddocks profiles the much-loved Russian composer

  • Friday, 26 May, 2023
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    Golden Age — confessions of an everyman

    Wang Xiaobo’s semi-autobiographical account of the final decades of the 20th century in China is both subversive and hilarious

  • Thursday, 25 May, 2023
    Review
    An Uneasy Inheritance — Polly Toynbee’s memoir of her family and other radicals

    The writer confronts family woes — and the difficulty of championing leftwing causes while hailing from privilege

  • Thursday, 18 May, 2023
    Review
    Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage — the tribulations of the Mandelas

    Jonny Steinberg’s outstanding biography balances sympathy with unflinching accounts of the discord that plagued South Africa’s power couple

  • Wednesday, 19 April, 2023
    ReviewFT Books Essay
    Alternative realities: caring for people with dementia

    With an ageing global population, cases of the disease continue to drastically rise. Two timely and insightful books offer help on how to support the millions of new patients

  • Thursday, 6 April, 2023
    Review
    The Marriage Question — the fascinating doubleness of George Eliot

    Clare Carlisle’s new biography splendidly locates the novelist in her times

  • Tuesday, 14 March, 2023
    Nilanjana Roy
    The persistence of the trauma memoir

    Where should the lines be drawn in the encouragement, promotion and marketing of stories about the misery of others?

  • Thursday, 9 March, 2023
    Africa special
    ‘The Famished Road’ and my quest for the imaginative richness of Africa

    When Ben Okri won the 1991 Booker prize, it was the culmination of a writing journey defined by literary experimentation — and upheaval

  • Wednesday, 1 March, 2023
    Review
    Manchester Unspun — the story of the city’s resurrection

    From the opening of the Haçienda to the property boom, adopted Mancunian Andy Spinoza tells a vivid story with the pride of a native

  • Tuesday, 28 February, 2023
    FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival
    Confessions by Edward Stourton — the journalist re-examines his life

    The BBC presenter reminisces about the scrapes and japes of a life lived inside the establishment

  • Friday, 24 February, 2023
    Review
    Metamorphosis — a magical memoir of a life in pieces

    Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s account of living with multiple sclerosis is driven by his formidable intellect and humanity

  • Friday, 17 February, 2023
    Review
    Voyager — the memory of Pinochet’s victims, written in the stars

    In her extraordinary memoir, Chilean writer Nona Fernández combines astronomy and neuroscience with a refusal to forget

  • Monday, 13 February, 2023
    Review
    Two Sisters by Blake Morrison — the challenge of family memoir

    The poet’s latest book tackles the subject of his sister, who died in 2018 of heart failure

  • Thursday, 2 February, 2023
    Review
    Still Pictures — Janet Malcolm turns the lens on herself

    A sort-of memoir by the pioneering journalist who died in 2021 evades a traditional narrative

  • Tuesday, 24 January, 2023
    ReviewHistory books
    Parisian Days by Banine — model citizen

    Swept along by revolutionary forces, the young émigré seeks to realise her dreams of ‘freedom and fantasy’ in 1920s France

  • Friday, 20 January, 2023
    Review
    Toy Fights: A Boyhood — Don Paterson’s memoir

    The Scottish poet delves into the murky waters of his life and emerges with clarity and wisdom

  • Friday, 20 January, 2023
    FT Weekend podcast30 min listen
    Surviving US healthcare. Plus: Prince Harry’s 'Spare'

    Claire Bushey explores the cost of US healthcare after her treatment for breast cancer. Then, Henry Mance reviews Prince Harry’s autobiography

  • Tuesday, 10 January, 2023
    Review
    Spare by Prince Harry — complain and explain

    The memoir is arguably the most insightful royal book in a generation, yet still leaves readers with many questions about the monarchy unanswered

  • Thursday, 5 January, 2023
    ReviewKatherine Mansfield
    All Sorts of Lives — Katherine Mansfield through her stories

    Biographer Claire Harman uses the great proto-Modernist’s fiction to illuminate her dramatic, short life

  • Friday, 16 December, 2022
    Review
    Confessions by AN Wilson — a ‘multiple personality’

    Essayist-biographer’s memoir evokes Rousseau and Augustine as it charts his life’s dramas and traumas

  • Friday, 9 December, 2022
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    Dickens and Prince — Nick Hornby’s love letter to prolific genius

    Apart from a prodigious output, what artistic traits did the 19th-century novelist share with the late pop musician?

  • Thursday, 8 December, 2022
    Review
    Wild — the wayward life of Peter Beard

    Graham Boynton’s biography turns the spotlight on the American artist and adventurer

  • Wednesday, 7 December, 2022
    Review
    Come Back in September — a literary education in New York

    Darryl Pinckney’s memoir fondly recalls his friendship with Elizabeth Hardwick, the doyenne of the world of letters who mentored and supported him

  • Friday, 2 December, 2022
    Review
    Shirley Hazzard by Brigita Olubas — a writer who felt the weight of history

    A deft biography of the Australian-American author illuminates the alchemical interplay of her life and fiction

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