Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author - a woman very much ahead of her time - including her time spent on the glorious island of Skiathos. Nancy Spain was one of the most celebrated - and notorious - writers and broadcasters of the '40s, '50s and '60s. Hilarious, controversial and brilliant, she lived openly as a lesbian (sharing a household with her two lovers and their various children) and was frequently litigated against for her newspaper columns - Evelyn Waugh successfully sued her for libel...twice. 

In July 2012, aged 30, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery and felt for the first time that her body matched the person she felt she had been since childhood. Through university and then in a series of dead end clerical jobs, Jacques felt out of place with her surroundings, and with who she really was. Living in Brighton, trying to launch a career as a writer, she navigates the hostilities and misunderstandings of growing up in a time when the mainstream media - and even feminism - fail to acknowledge transgender identity.

What does it really mean to be a man? In Man Alive, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life - one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who almost killed him. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood and tells us how a brush with violence sent him on the quest to untangle a sinister past and freed him to become the man he was meant to be.

'Brilliant and powerful' ELIZABETH GILBERT 'So full of wisdom and pleasure that you don’t want it to end' MAGGIE NELSON 'Only Melissa Febos could convince us of the ecstasy of abstinence' KATHERINE MAY A TIME 'must-read' book of 2025 A Vogue, TIME and Vulture 'most anticipated’ book of 2025...

'Thoughtful, beautiful, incredibly necessary. People need to read this book, especially if they feel a resistance to. I wish everyone would.' Sofie Hagen ‘Uncompromising, anguished, combative: culture wars have victims, and this is an agonising story told with honesty and passion.’ Richard...

""One of the most brilliant thought leaders I have been able to share space with.""—Jonathan van Ness, from the foreword ""The must-read memoir of fall 2023.""—Them ""Powerful and vital.""—Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Song of Achilles From a celebrated...

In this funny and poignant memoir and cultural history, the television personality, columnist, and author of Drag pays homage to Lou Reed’s groundbreaking album Transformer on its fiftieth anniversary and recalls its influence on his coming of age and coming out through glam rock. In November...

Who was the real love of Freddie Mercury's life . . . ? 'Eyewitness gold' - SUNDAY TIMES Millions of Queen and screen fans who watched the Oscar-winning film Bohemian Rhapsody believe that Mary Austin, the woman he could never quite let go of, was the love of Freddie Mercury's life. But the...

*Read by Alan Cumming himself* ""An intimate look at the making of a man, an actor, an advocate—and most importantly—a happy human being. A wonderful book that is funny, honest, fearless, and generous in its vulnerability."" —Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain...

The funny, moving, life-affirming memoir from much-loved comedian and star of The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice and The Apprentice: You're Fired! 'An extraordinary portrait of a son navigating his way through grief and loss in real time. Funny, candid, and measured' GRAHAM NORTON 'This...

The Times Art Book of the Year 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PLUTARCH AWARD 2022 ‘Must surely be the definitive life of Francis Bacon … A biography that no Bacon fan – or indeed foe – can afford to overlook … Mesmerising’ THE TIMES ‘A magnificent triumph … I was captivated by every...

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children

As the US occupation of Iraq rages, novelist Mortada Gzar, a student at the University of Baghdad, has a chance encounter with Morise, an African American soldier. It’s love at first sight, a threat to them both, and a moment of self-discovery. Challenged by society’s rejection and Morise’s return to the US, Mortada takes to the page to understand himself. In his affecting memoir, Mortada interweaves tales of his childhood work as a scrap-metal collector in a war zone and the indignities faced by openly gay artists in Iraq with his impossible love story and journey to the US.

Brought to you by Penguin. A hilarious and inspiring guide to transforming your life through lessons from drag, by the UK's favourite drag queen and star of RuPaul's Drag Race UK, Bimini Bon Boulash. Bimini Bon Boulash is the nation's sweetheart, capturing hearts and minds as the gag-inducing...

In March 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship was struck by a bomb cyclone in the North Atlantic. Rocked by 50-foot swells and 40-knot gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast in Norway. This is the suspenseful, harrowing, funny, touching story by one passenger who contemplated death aboard that ship.

In "Society's Child," you'll journey with Janis as she spends time with luminaries of the century-Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin-singers and songwriters who both influenced and befriended her. Her book takes an unblinking look at the music business, her own remarkable path through it, and what was really happening backstage-with honesty and integrity.

A comical and poignant memoir of a gay man living life as he pleased in the 1930s In 1931, gay liberation was not a movement—it was simply unthinkable. But in that year, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to "come out" as a homosexual. This exhibitionist with the henna-dyed hair was...

Brought to you by Penguin. AN EXTRAORDINARILY MOVING AND ORIGINAL MEMOIR OF GROWING UP GAY AND DISABLED IN 1980S LONDON When Emmett de Monterey is eighteen months old, a doctor diagnoses him with cerebral palsy. Words too heavy for his twenty-five-year-old artist parents and their happy, smiling...

Finding self-acceptance both on and off the mat. In Sanskrit, yoga means to “yoke.” To yoke mind and body, movement and breath, light and dark, the good and the bad. This larger idea of “yoke” is what Jessamyn Stanley calls the yoga of the everyday—a yoga that is not just about...

Brought to you by Penguin. A Guardian and Lit Hub most anticipated book of 2024 Read these chapters like a collection of poems that speak in chorus in all directions. Understand each word as an opportunity for Audre’s fierce love, which is the same love that birthed the volcanoes and split the...