Memoir
The day I woke up… to hear that only Tracey Thorn loved me
It’s unusual for musicians to become writers. The trajectory of yearning is meant to be the other way around. When…
France gets a taste for Bacon
The case of Michael Peppiatt is a curious one. He first met Francis Bacon when he was an undergraduate at…
In Epping Forest’s dark undergrowth
In this current era of identity politics and a more fluid approach to gender and sexuality amongst a younger generation,…
Casanova: the scandalous libertine who seduced his own daughter
This monumental unabridged audio production of Casanova’s memoir The Story of My Life in three volumes covers his first 49…
Insomnia is key to my creativity
A genre of memoir currently in vogue involves entwining the author’s personal story with the cultural history of a given…
If only we could hibernate all winter
As travel writer, nature writer, memory retriever and, I would add, prose-poet of mesmerising lyricism, Horatio Clare is a celebrant…
‘We are not cattle, we’re people’: everyday hell in Stalin’s labour camps
‘No testimony from this time must ever be forgotten,’ the great Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova says in his afterword to…
It’s the wreckage of alcoholism, not the road to recovery, that makes for enthralling reading
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, novelist, columnist, bestselling essayist and assistant professor at Colombia University, makes for bracing reading. Clever,…
Fried squid, stale sweat and sensuality in Ian Buruma’s Tokyo
In 1975, the 24-year-old Ian Buruma (now an award-winning essayist and historian, and the editor of the New York Review…
Enduring life under Chairman Mao
Rao Pingru is 94, and a born storyteller. His gripping graphic narrative weaves in and out of the violent, disruptive…
The ordeal of being married (twice) to John Bellany
Misery memoirs are in vogue. There is much misery in this harrowing account of married life with John Bellany (1942–2013)…
The futile gang wars of New York
I’ve interviewed a lot of rappers over the years and always feel a little grimy when I find myself nudging…
The misery of policing the US–Mexico border
Francisco Cantú’s mother is surprised when he announces he’s joining the Border Patrol and going to work in the Arizona…
Laura Freeman reads her way out of anorexia
It is hard to be honest about anorexia. The illness breeds deceit and distortion: ‘It thrives on looking-glass logic. It…
The best way to escape my abusive family was to write novels
Early on in Amy Tan’s 1989 bestseller, The Joy Luck Club, a Chinese concubine slices a chunk of flesh from…
It’s not a wave’s crest, but its translucent interior that surfers dream of
Surfing has come of age. Like rock and roll, it was once strictly for young people, edgy and alternative and…
How Lucky Lucan begged me for money shortly before mistakenly murdering the nanny
A Moment in Time reminded me of the sort of British expatriate women I used to meet in the south…
Despite her inability to talk or swallow, Genevieve Fox brims with joie de vivre
A good, solid life-threatening illness can be the making of a writer. This has certainly been the case for Genevieve…
Never had it so good: British novelists in the 1980s
In 1990, the BBC’s adaptation of David Lodge’s culture-clash novel Nice Work won an award at a glitzy soirée in…
A master of Norwegian wood
Ole Thorstensen has been a carpenter for 25 years. A master craftsman, in fact. He is busy working on a…
What will Katie Hopkins do next?
In her memoir Rude, the former Mail Online columnist Katie Hopkins reveals her true self. She does this by accident,…
Secrets of an abused aristocratic childhood
Charles Duff’s memoir tells a sad tale of cruelty and betrayal with spry wit rather than bitter resentment. Notwithstanding the…
Art and aspiration
When Adam Gopnik arrived in Manhattan in late 1980 he was an art history postgrad so poor that he and…
Descent into hell
It’s awful, but the surname Rausing (once synonymous only with the Tetrapak fortune) now summons up a terrible stench in…
Creature comforts
As naturalist, educator and writer, John Lister-Kaye was for many years a voice in the wilderness. In 1976, when nature…
