My Father's Fortune
Michael Frayn
'An unknown place.' This was what Michael Frayn's children called the shadowy landscape of the past from which their family had emerged. In this book he sets out...
I Must Collect Myself
Choice Cuts from a Long Shelf-Life
Maureen Lipman
Maureen Lipman has the knack of making the everyday supremely entertaining, the ordinary absurd and unexpected. This new collection of pieces sparkles with her inimitable prose and pithy...
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
Judith Kerr
Partly autobiographical, this is first of the internationally acclaimed trilogy by Judith Kerr telling the unforgettable story of a Jewish family fleeing from Germany at the start of...
A Small Person Faraway
Judith Kerr
Partly autobiographical, this is the third title in Judith Kerr’s internationally acclaimed trilogy of books following the life of Anna through war-torn Germany, to London during the Blitz...
Bombs on Aunt Dainty
Judith Kerr
Partly autobiographical, this is the second title in Judith Kerr's internationally acclaimed trilogy of books following the life of Anna through war-torn Germany, to London during the Blitz...
And It's Goodnight From Him...
Ronnie Corbett
Double acts don’t come any closer than the The Two Ronnies. Messrs Barker and Corbett kept a nation laughing for two decades, and yet despite the rigorous work...
Always the Children
A Nurse's Story of Home and War
Anne Watts
Anne Watts grew up in a small village in north Wales in the 1940s. Inspired by school geography lessons that told of far-off lands, she broke out of...
Nella Last's War
The Second World War Diaries of 'Housewife 49'
Trustees of the Mass Observation Archives
In September 1939, housewife and mother Nella Last began a diary whose entries, in their regularity, length and quality, have created a record of the Second World War...
Five Chimneys
A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz
Olga Lengyel
Booktrust, Bookbite, read, reading, book, books, literature, history, war history, war, biography, autobiography
The Boy with the Topknot
A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton
Sathnam Sanghera
'It's 1979, I'm three years old, and like all breakfast times during my youth it begins with Mum combing my hair, a ritual for which I have to...
Four Meals for Fourpence
Grace Foakes
'I was born in a tenement flat in the East End of London in the year in which Queen Victoria died.' Four Meals for Fourpence is Grace Foakes's...
When I Was a Nipper
Alan Titchmarsh
In 'When I Was a Nipper', Alan Titchmarsh goes on a personal and nostalgic journey through postwar Britain in search of treasured values and traditions. Born in Yorkshire...
Wait For Me!
Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister
Deborah Devonshire
Deborah Devonshire is a natural writer with a knack for the telling phrase and for hitting the nail on the head. She tells the story of her upbringing,...
The Hare with Amber Eyes
Edmund De Waal
264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment...
Fathers and Sons
Richard Madeley
Richard Madeley is fascinated by the speed of change in family life and how being a father has changed since the time of his father and grandfather. In...
Falling Leaves
Adeline Yen Mah
The story of an unwanted Chinese daughter growing up during the Communist Revolution, blamed for her mother's death, ignored by her millionaire father and unwanted by her Eurasian...
The Music Room
William Fiennes
William Fiennes’s childhood was one of imagination and curiosity, bounded only by the horizon he saw from the roof-tiles of his ancient family home. His older brother Richard,...
Wild Swans
Three Daughters of China
Jung Chang
The publication of Wild Swans in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did it become the bestselling non-fiction book in British publishing history, with sales of well...
Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter
Jenni Murray
The only child of an electrical engineer and a mother who resented the fact that she'd never been to university, the broadcaster Jenni Murray grew up in a...
The Good Soldiers
David Finkel
In January 2007, the young and optimistic soldiers of the 2-16, the American infantry battalion known as the Rangers, were sent to Iraq as part of the surge....
Goodbye to All That
Robert Graves
In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life up until that...
Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts
In 1978, gifted student and writer Greg Roberts turned to heroin when his marriage collapsed, feeding his addiction with a string of robberies. Caught and convicted, he was...
Paper Houses
A Memoir of the 70s and Beyond
Michèle Roberts
Rebellion, revolution, experimental living, feminist communes, street theatre, radical magazines, love affairs - gay and straight - sex, drugs and rock and roll. Michele Roberts, one of Britain's...
The Bookseller of Kabul
Asne Seierstad
Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict. In the following spring she returned to live with a bookseller...
Road to the Dales
The Story of a Yorkshire Lad
Gervase Phinn
Gervase tells of a life full of happiness, conversation, music and books shared with his three siblings, mother and father. This book is a snapshot of growing up...
Salvation Creek
Susan Duncan
At 44, Susan Duncan appeared to have it all. Editor of two top-selling women's magazines, a happy marriage, a jetsetting lifestyle covering stories from New York to Greenland,...
Spilling the Beans
Clarissa Dickson Wright
Clarissa was born into wealth and privilege. As a child, shooting and hunting were the norm and pigeons were flown in from Cairo for supper. Her mother was...
Dreams from my Father
A Story of Race and Inheritance
Barack Obama
The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years...
The Forbidden Zone
A Nurse's Impressions of the First World War
Mary Borden
May Borden worked for four years in an evacuation hospital unit following the front lines up and down the European theatre of the First World War; this beautifully...
Endal
How One Extraordinary Dog Brought a Family Back from the Brink
Allen Parton and Sandra Parton
The story of Endal, voted 'Dog of the Millennium', and how, through his remarkable skills, companionship and unstinting devotion, he gave Allen Parton a reason to live again....
Call the Midwife
A True Story Of The East End In The 1950s
Jennifer Worth
Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half...
The Heart of the Dales
Gervase Phinn
Gervase Phinn is back with his tales of life as a schools inspector in Yorkshire. His colourful cast of characters have now become firm favourites - the mostly...
The Other Side of the Dale
Gervase Phinn
This is a warm, funny and mostly true account of the first year that Gervase Phinn spent as a schools' inspector in North Yorkshire. His brilliantly portrayed cast...
That's Another Story
The autobiography
Julie Walters
Julie Walters has been described as the nation's most popular actress and comedienne. She has been delighting us on screen and on stage for over 25 years and...
The Last Fighting Tommy
The Life of Harry Patch, the Only Surviving Veteran of the Trenches
Harry Patch/Richard van Emden
Booktrust, Bookbite, read, reading, book, books, literature, autobiography, biography, non-fiction, history, war history, war
The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years
Clive James
For many people, Clive James will always be a TV presenter first and foremost, and a writer second - this despite the fact that his adventures with the...
At My Mother's Knee... and Other Low Joints
Paul O'Grady
Paul O'Grady, apart from being one of Britain's best loved entertainers, is a classic example of reinvention, as At My Mother’s Knee demonstrates. The young Liverpool entertainer, an...
My Life, My Way
Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard OBE is the biggest-selling artist of all time, selling over 250 million records around the world since he burst onto the music scene in 1958....
In the Frame
My Life In Words And Pictures
Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren has been an internationally acclaimed actress and the recipient of many awards, transferring without obvious effort from stage, cinema and television for over 40 years. Known...
The Kindness of Strangers
The Autobiography of Kate Adie
Kate Adie
Kate Adie's story is an unusual one. Raised in post-war Sunderland, where life was 'a sunny experience, full of meat-paste sandwiches and Sunday school', she has reported memorably...
The Centre of the Bed
Joan Bakewell
The story of Joan Bakewell's life and times spans the Blitz in Manchester, Cambridge during the glittering era of Michael Frayn, Peter Hall, Jonathan Miller et al., London...
Just 70
The View from Here
Joan Bakewell
Built loosely on her much-loved Guardian column – ‘Just 70’ – ‘The View from Here’ is Bakewell's discerning and heartwarming account of life at 70 and beyond. A...
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
The Official Biography
William Shawcross
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes Lyon, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Strathmore, was born on 4 August 1900. It might reasonably have been expected that she would...
Alan Clark: The Biography
Ion Trewin
Although Alan Clark died in 1999, his reputation lives on - a TV series (John Hurt as Alan) gave BBC4 its first million+ audience. His diaries sold more...
Parky: My Autogiography
Michael Parkinson
From prize-winning journalist to chat show king on a show voted one of the top ten British TV programmes of all time, Michael Parkinson's starry career spans over...
My Word is My Bond
The Autobiography
Roger Moore
The quintessential suave hero, Roger Moore has had an extraordinary career that has spanned seven decades, from early television to the golden age of Hollywood and on to...
Just Me
Sheila Hancock
In The Two of Us Sheila Hancock relived her life with John Thaw - years packed with love and family, work and houses, delight and despair. And then...
Our Betty
Liz Smith
Liz Smith, once called the nation's favourite fictional grandmother, is a familiar face to all TV and cinema viewers. She is most often recognised for her role of...
Comments
I have just read Looking Up by Tim Rushby-Smith who is learning to live again with sudden disability after a tragic accident. It is sad and humourous and makes you reevaluate your life and your priorities.
Dear Rose: We have taken your suggestions to heart and have added one of the suggested titles to our Vote for Book of the Month page: http://www.bookbite.org.uk/reading/bookbitereadinggroup/bookofthemonth/vote/ Many thanks for your suggestions.
Why not add more biographies to this section? What about Vera Brittain, Clarissa Dickson Wright's Spilling the Beans and No Ordinary Man by Dominic Carman about his father?
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