Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Does peaking in high school ruin you for life? Was Miley Cyrus right, is it all about the climb (when it comes to building a career?) And what - scientifically - is the best way to mend a broken heart? Comedian Suzi Ruffell is considering life's big questions. In this brutally honest, funny, and often moving memoir, Suzi winningly tells her life story, and asks a host of experts to answer the tricky questions it prompts along the way. Diamond life advice comes from the likes of Elizabeth Day, Dolly Alderton, Charlene Douglas, Laura Bates, Dr Kirren Schnack, and more.

This dazzling memoir promises to be a courageously frank, honest and poignant read. It will detail some of Fry's most turbulent and least-well-known years, with writing that will excite you, make you laugh uproariously, move you, inform you, and, above all, surprise you.

Mark Ward is the founder of Haemosexual—an online support and information resource championing equality, education and better healthcare for everyone with a bleeding disorder, no matter what their sexual orientation. Mark's battle to secure a public enquiry into the Infected Blood Scandal—which is finally due to report in May—has led him to places he never expected, and to meet people he never dreamt of.

In this intimate memoir, Luke takes us behind the scenes of his career on the stage and screen. He writes beautifully of the relationship he now has with his family and the respect they all have for one another on their different paths. Luke's story is a powerful tale of resilience, courage, and the pursuit of finding a sense of belonging and identity, but mostly (and hopefully) a story of inspiration.

Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure. Now, at last, at the age of 80, she has finally decided to tell her extraordinary life story. And it's far richer and stranger than any part she's played.

Following on from his hugely successful books, Moab Is My Washpot and The Fry Chronicles, comes the third chapter in Stephen Fry's life. This unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of More Fool Me is performed by Stephen Fry himself.

In the early aughts, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey—both young artists trying to figure it all out—met at auditions for what they thought was just an unknown little TV show. Given that it was a show about lesbians living in LA, with the first ever ensemble cast of openly queer female characters, Kate and Leisha knew the project was going to be unlike anything else out there. What they didn't foresee was just how huge The L Word would become.

'Between the Stops is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It's about a bus trip really, because it's my view from the Number 12 bus (mostly top deck, the seat at the front on the right), a double-decker that plies its way from Dulwich, in South East London, where I was living, to where I sometimes work - at the BBC, in the heart of the capital. It's not a sensible way to write a memoir at all, probably, but it's the way things pop into your head as you travel, so it's my way'.

Few people serve time in prison before studying at Cambridge. You might be surprised to know that Stephen Fry is one of them. Moab is My Washpot, the remarkable story of Stephen Fry's tumultuous early life, is by turns funny, shocking, tender, delicious, sad, lyrical, bruisingly frank and addictively listenable.

Alan Bennett is one of the country's most celebrated and best-loved authors. This unmissable collection of diaries and memoirs brings together for the first time Telling Tales, Diaries: 1980-1990, the autobiographical section of Untold Stories, which covers the period 1997-2004, and Keeping On Keeping On: The Diaries 2005-2014. With wit, wisdom, sharp social commentary and perceptive impressions, Alan Bennett's memoirs and diaries are a joy to discover, and a delight to hear again.

This is a true story that spans the sweeping account of a unique affair between two women. In the face of adversity and against all odds, the relationship has blossomed immeasurably and thrived happily. Christine, a 59-year-old English lady, meets 33-year-old charismatic and lovely Alexandra, in Cape Town in 2002. Alexandra is working in a high-powered job and visiting Christine's neighbour in Simon's Town for Christmas. The women are introduced and a powerful and mutual attraction overtakes them which neither has experienced before.

The voice, the dressing-down, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when one of Private Lives, Hay Fever, and Blithe Spirit is not in production somewhere in the world. Phrases from Noël Coward's songs - "Mad About The Boy", "Mad Dogs and Englishman" - are forever lodged in the public consciousness. He was at one point the most highly paid author in the world. Yet some of his most striking and daring writing remains unfamiliar.

Eddie Mair is, by his own account, one of Britain's most beloved broadcasters. Born in Dundee, Scotland, he has worked in radio all his adult life. From the foothills of commercial radio in his hometown, through the sunlit uplands of the BBC in Scotland, he has reached the peaks of his profession with BBC network radio in London. And he's never afraid to work a metaphor beyond endurance.

In Love in Exile, Shon Faye shows love is much greater than the narrow ideals we have been taught to crave so desperately that we are willing to bend and break ourselves to fit them. Wise, funny, unsparing, and suffused with a radical clarity, this is a book of and for our times: for seeing and knowing love, in whatever form it takes, is the meaning of life itself.

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date—a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance. A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.

"I've experienced a whole lot the last few years and I have a lot to share. So I hope that you'll take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy the words I've put together for you in this book. I think you'll find I've left no stone unturned, no door unopened, no window unbroken, no rug unvacuumed, no ivories untickled. What I'm saying is, let us begin, shall we?" (Ellen DeGeneres)

Author Kate Bornstein ushers listeners on a funny, fearless, and wonderfully scenic journey across the terrains of gender and identity. On one level, Gender Outlaw details Bornstein's transformation from heterosexual male to lesbian woman, from a one-time IBM salesperson to a playwright and performance artist. But this particular coming-of-age story is also a provocative investigation into our notions of male and female, from a self-described nonbinary transfeminine diesel femme dyke who never stops questioning our cultural assumptions.

Known and loved by her many New Zealand and Australian fans as a down-to-earth broadcaster, radio host and social media sensation, Bree Tomasel is an irrepressible force of nature. But behind the banter and success, is a young woman who has battled anxiety and survived a harrowing attack on her as a young child. Funny, candid, raw—this is Bree Tomasel as you've never seen her.

A parish priest in Northamptonshire; a former rock-star whose number-one hit with The Communards was the biggest-selling single of 1986; the regular host of BBC Radio 4's SATURDAY LIVE - these three people are not usually embodied in one person. The Reverend Richard Coles' memoir offers his rich and personal insights into one of the most diverse of lives, encompassed with the wit and humour he brings to his popular radio show. Richard Coles gives the phrase 'time management' a new emphasis.

Born in New York City’s Black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married White poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city’s new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in 1961. Through the decade’s opening years, new art, new sexual practices, new music, and new political awareness burgeoned. Beautifully, vividly, insightfully, Delany calls up this era of exploration and adventure as he details his development as a Black gay writer in an open marriage, with walk-ons by Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael, and more.