Artists, Writers & Cultural Biography Books

Samuel Beckett was perhaps the most unconventional playwright of the twentieth century. His plays broke all the rules by dispensing with traditional concepts of plot, scene, and character, concentrating instead on the experience o…

From one of our most powerful writers, a classic work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo,…

Twentieth Anniversary Edition with Contributions from Joe Hill and Owen King Part memoir, part masterclass by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, …

When he receives an invitation to deliver a lecture in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, international lawyer Philippe Sands begins a journey on the trail of his family's secret history. In doing so, he uncovers an astonishing series of…

Paul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial…

Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his child…

I'm the manager of a very unusual bookshop. I have access to over ten thousand books, and I'll recommend the perfect one for you. 80,000 COPIES SOLD IN JAPAN THIS IS A LOVE STORY. A LOVE STORY ABOUT BOOKS. Nanako Hanada's life ha…

The author of Call Me by Your Name returns with a deeply romantic memoir of his time in Rome while on the cusp of adulthood.In Roman Year, Andre Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first…

In The Hard Crowd, Kushner gathers a selection of her writing from over the course of the last twenty years that addresses the most pressing political, artistic, and cultural issues of our times and illuminates the themes and real…

‘The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city – the whole world – with a person you may never have met.’ These words set the framework for The Possession, a striking portrait of a woman after a love a…

Born in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebra…

A deeply moving and brilliantly idiosyncratic visual book of days by the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train. More than 365 images chart Smith’s singular aesthetic - inspired by her wildly popular Instagra…

An intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigorous interrogation and …

On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was sitting onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed do…

In 'Stone Mad' Seamus Murphy tells the story of his seven years spent as an apprentice to the stone carving trade, the growing knowledge of the challenges and joys of stone – and of the men who worked it. His artistic feeling for…

Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake …

A deeply moving memoir about growing up in the 90s, written in the wake of the senseless killing of a beloved friend.  Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Memoir. One of The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. When Hua …

Growing up in 1970s Mexico City, Jennifer Clement lived next door to Frida Kahlo's house. It was a bohemian childhood, living alongside artists, communists, revolutionaries and poets, which allowed an awakening of creative freedom…

Anyone who has heard David Sedaris speaking live or on the radio will tell you that a collection from him is cause for jubilation. A move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including 'Me Talk Pretty One Day', …

In my case, reading has always served a dual purpose. In a positive sense, it offers sustenance, enlightenment, the bliss of fascination. In a negative sense, it is a means of withdrawal, of inhabiting a reality quarantined from o…

From a young age, Ed Gamble's immaculate bibs and extremely dirty nappies hinted at his capacious appetite. Before he could walk, Ed already knew that he preferred poached salmon to puree, that celery was a calorie-sapping waste o…

GBS was the first great brand – discover how he created this most modern of concepts. The fourth book in the Royal Irish Academy’s award-winning ‘Judging’ series looks at the legacy of George Bernard Shaw, Nobel prizewinner for li…

'He understands only the women he invents – the others not at all' Thomas Hardy is one of the most beloved and most-read British authors. His influence on literature and the minds of his readers is singular. But how is it that th…

In this contemplative short narrative, artist and acclaimed writer Sara Baume charts the daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to try to live as an artist. Elegantly encompassing images from a wor…

Joan Didion's savage masterpiece, which, since first publication in 1968, has been acknowledged as an unparalleled report on the state of America during the upheaval of the Sixties Revolution. We forget all too soon the things we …

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. I thought of life's many bounties, to have known the extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success a…

Colm Tóibín’s personal account of encountering James Baldwin’s work, published in Baldwin’s centenary year. Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. He had completed his first year…

Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Nowhere was this more so than in his private life. Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love a…

The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaard's masterful and intensely-personal series about the four seasons, illustrated with paintings by the great German artist Anselm KieferThe conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and origi…

A spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Wood. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as…