Memoir
The nerdy obsessive who became the world’s richest man
Seen by fellow pupils as an obnoxious loner, Bill Gates was a rebellious teenager, challenging his teachers and ‘at war’ with his parents
The strange potency of cheap perfume
Adelle Stripe has constructed a memoir around 18 key fragrances, but it is the Body Shop’s cheery Dewberry that evokes her worst teenage experience
Red-letter days for Gilbert & George
After a successful show in Moscow in 1990, the odd couple went on to even greater triumph in China three years later, as the long-suffering curator of both exhibitions describes
The next best thing to visiting a really clever friend in New York
Vivian Gornick’s memoir of life in the city in the 1960s and 1970s is rich in anecdote and dialogues with waspish friends and neighbours
Four legs good, two legs bad – the philosophy of Gerald Durrell
From a young man determined to protect the world’s vulnerable species, Durrell became in middle age someone who loathed the species of which he was a member
Was Graham Brady really the awesome power-broker he imagines?
His kiss-and-tell memoir implies that the past five Tory prime ministers all feared him. But the longtime Chair of the 1922 Committee was in reality no ‘kingmaker’
A rare combination of humour and pathos: the sublimely talented Neil Innes
The musician and parodist, whose mantra was ‘not to say no when there’s a way to say yes’, had a gift for creating happiness in private as well as public, as his widow poignantly attests
The good soldier Maczek – a war hero betrayed
After fighting for the Allies in Hungary, France, Belgium and Holland, Stanislaw Maczek finds himself stripped of his Polish citizenship as a result of the Yalta conference
A father’s love: Childish Literature, by Alejandro Zambra, reviewed
The Chilean writer contributes obliquely to the fledgling genre of fatherhood literature, combining family vignettes with literary criticism and a ‘diary’ addressed to his infant son
Fortitude, emotional intelligence and wit – the defining qualities of Simon Russell Beale
The Shakespearean actor has taken on 18 of the great roles since his first gig at the RSC in 1985 and recalls them with insight, sensitivity and a sharp passion for language
Seeking forgiveness for gluttony, sloth and other deadly sins
The neurologist Guy Leschziner explores the medical conditions that might underlie extremes of human behaviour in a fascinating study that combines biology and psychology
Surviving an abusive mother-daughter relationship
In a dialogue with her younger self, the Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis tries to make sense of her traumatic upbringing at the hands of a repressive, coercive mother
The shame of being an alcoholic mother
Julia Hamilton and her daughter Arabella Byrne share their experiences of an addiction that seemed ‘baked into them like a curse’, and the special stigma they felt attached to them
From public bar to cocktail bar: books for the discerning drinker
There’s something for all tastes this year, whether poetic meditations on the pub, advice on wines for extended cellaring or recipes for new-wave martinis
And still the colonial memoirs keep coming…
Peter Godwin’s third volume to date – of a family in various stages of decline after leaving their African homeland – is redeemed by its vivid evocations and erudition
How ballet lessons transformed Princess Diana
The choreographer Anne Allan not only indulged the princess’s love of dance in weekly one-to-one sessions but also became her longstanding confidante
The hare-raising experience that changed my life
When Chloe Dalton adopts an abandoned new-born leveret, she soon finds her domestic routine radically altered
Is it wrong to try to ‘cure’ autism?
Do autistic individuals not feel empathy? What is the right treatment for an autistic child? These are just some of the questions discussed in Virginia Bovell’s passionate, informative memoir
Her weird name was the least of Moon Unit Zappa’s problems
Frank and Gail Zappa’s eldest child describes how the endless battles between her manipulative mother and misogynist father in the 1970s blight the family to this day
Imperfections in wood can make for the loveliest carvings
Often beneath the surface of a knobbly lump bulging from the side of a tree ‘a myriad of swirling, almost impossibly beautiful clusters is hiding’, bursting with creative possibility