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Biography and memoir

  • Wednesday, 1 January, 2025
    Review
    The Brothers Grimm: A Biography — the truth behind the fairy tales

    A dive into the lives of the storyteller brothers tells how the pair made their way to literary fame

    An early 19th-century colour portrait of two men with similar faces depicted in profile facing left
  • Friday, 13 December, 2024
    ReviewFiction
    Childish Literature — reflections on the joys and fears of parenting

    Alejandro Zambra explores the ups and downs of fatherhood in this collection of essays, poems and stories

    A toylike decoration in the shape of a fluffy pink unicorn hanging from the ceiling
  • Monday, 9 December, 2024
    Review
    Memories of Distant Mountains by Orhan Pamuk — illustrated fragments from the writer’s life

    Compiled over more than a decade, the Nobel winner’s notebooks combine memoir with his own colourful paintings

    An open notebook with words written roughly in blue and drawings of mountains
  • Saturday, 7 December, 2024
    Alex von Tunzelmann
    Why are political memoirs so mediocre?

    Most politicians are fundamentally unsuited to the painful and exposing reckoning that is required

    Angela Merkel’s autobiography, ‘Freedom’, has struggled to draw enthusiastic praise
  • Thursday, 5 December, 2024
    Review
    The Many Lives of James Lovelock — contradictions of a maverick scientist

    Jonathan Watts nimbly dissects the brilliance and flaws of the father of Gaia theory

    A photograph of an elderly grey-haired man in glasses and wearing a khaki sweater, seen through the multi-paned window of his laboratory and looking directly at the camera
  • Tuesday, 26 November, 2024
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    Freedom by Angela Merkel — a paean to a bygone halcyon age

    The former German chancellor’s remarkable story is undermined by a failure to admit mistakes — though she does not pull her punches on Putin and Trump

    Angela Merkel talks to Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Canada, 2018, surrounded by other G7 leaders and advisers
  • Tuesday, 19 November, 2024
    FT SeriesThe best books of the year 2024
    Best books of 2024: Literary non-fiction

    Carl Wilkinson selects his must-read titles

  • Monday, 18 November, 2024
    FT SeriesThe best books of the year 2024
    Best books of 2024: Classical and Pop Music

    Richard Fairman and Ludovic Hunter-Tilney select their must-read titles

  • Friday, 15 November, 2024
    Review
    And the Walls Became the World All Around — reflections on a life

    Johanna Ekström’s notebooks, translated by her friend Sigrid Rausing, offer a moving testament to love, friendship and loss

    A woman with short white-blonde hair leans back on a couch, smiling slightly, resting her head on her raised arm
  • Saturday, 9 November, 2024
    Emma Jacobs
    Why it’s often luck, not talent, that takes us to the top

    No one likes to admit it — but life’s lottery has a big role to play in success

    A man in a suit sings into a microphone on stage
  • Friday, 8 November, 2024
    Review
    The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy — strange and moving reflections on the writer’s life

    An enjoyably free-roaming collection of essays and poems explores everything from the courage of Colette to the influence of Freud

    A woman in her early sixties with red-brown hair and red lipstick looks intently towards the camera
  • Thursday, 31 October, 2024
    Review
    Shattered — Hanif Kureishi’s life-affirming post-paralysis memoir

    After his crushing accident, the author’s droll, trenchant voice records humour and small joys — without prettifying the pain

    A man with white hair seated in a wheelchair in a garden. He wears a dark blue sweater, dark trousers and orange-and-blue trainers, and is surrounded by shrubbery and planters
  • Friday, 25 October, 2024
    ReviewBooks
    The Impossible Man — the heavy price of life as a physics genius

    Black holes, space-time . . . Roger Penrose’s work won him a Nobel — but tore his family apart, as Patchen Barss reveals in a fascinating biography

    A view from above of a man in a dark jacket standing on a spiral staircase that appears to descend in ever-decreasing circular patterns
  • Friday, 25 October, 2024
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux — snapshots of a year of cancer and love

    The Nobel-winner’s memoir, co-written with Marc Marie, examines life, passion and mortality with resolute honesty

  • Tuesday, 22 October, 2024
    Review
    Patriot — Alexei Navalny’s fight for a ‘beautiful Russia’, in his own words

    The memoir of Putin’s murdered opponent is a worthy testament to his courage, defiance and humour

  • Wednesday, 16 October, 2024
    Review
    Gambling Man — the remarkable, rollercoaster story of SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son

    Lionel Barber’s pacy biography charts the tech investor’s audacious career and gets a glimpse of the man behind the enigma

  • Saturday, 12 October, 2024
    Obituary
    Lore Segal, Austrian-American novelist, 1928-2024

    Escape from Nazi Germany through the Kindertransport initiative was the catalyst for a lifetime of writing

  • Wednesday, 9 October, 2024
    Review
    Boris Johnson’s Unleashed — the hero of his own Homeric tale

    The man who would be world king claims many triumphs but reveals his mortal failings in this racy account of his political career

  • Friday, 4 October, 2024
    FT MagazineRobert Shrimsley
    Ask Shrimsley: I’ve borked Britain. Is it time to write my memoirs?

    Yes, please do. Everyone is dying to know why it wasn’t your fault

  • Wednesday, 18 September, 2024
    Review
    Kingmaker — setting the record straight on the Pamela Harriman story

    Sonia Purnell’s supremely enjoyable biography views the socialite’s life through a new and sympathetic lens

  • Wednesday, 11 September, 2024
    Review
    A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown: circumnavigating the regal void

    A brilliantly funny and well researched biography of Elizabeth II has to contend with its uniquely inscrutable subject

  • Friday, 30 August, 2024
    Review
    A Piece of Work — Simon Russell Beale on a career spent playing Shakespearean roles

    An autobiography that’s also a work of criticism — and all the better for it

    A man stands against a black background with his arm outstretched. He is wearing a black jacket and white shirt
  • Thursday, 29 August, 2024
    Review
    Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin — man versus myth

    Gauguin’s quasi memoir, rediscovered in 2020, is a key source for a biography that captures the painter’s contradictory character

    An Impressionist self-portrait in sunny colours of a man with a moustache wearing a brimmed hat and black jacket against a backdrop of a yellow wall with a small painting behind him
  • Tuesday, 20 August, 2024
    Review
    Earth to Moon — growing up with Frank Zappa

    Moon Unit Zappa’s memoir of a childhood spent in the chaotic household of her zany rocker father is lyrical, moving and funny

    A man holds a toddler in his lap at the mouth of a cave
  • Friday, 16 August, 2024
    ReviewNon-Fiction
    Broken Threads by Mishal Husain — an elegiac and poetic family memoir

    The BBC newsreader pays tribute to the grandparents who witnessed the turbulent birth of an independent India

    A smiling woman in a sari sits on a haystack, holding a recorder or flute. Two little boys sit either side of her
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