Memoir
Haunted by my great-grandfather’s second wife – by Alice Mah
An academic specialising in ecology, Mah traces her constant anxiety about the world to a ghostly Chinese forebear
Should family history, however painful, be memorialised forever?
What to hold on to and what to let go of is Samantha Ellis’s dilemma when trying to explain the complexities of their Judeo-Iraqi heritage to her young son
‘Sitting the 11-plus was the most momentous event of my life’ – Geoff Dyer
‘Everything else that has happened couldn’t have happened were it not for that’, says Dyer, in a funny, moving account of growing up in postwar England
Why are publishers such bad judges when it comes to their own memoirs?
Anthony Cheetham has been responsible for many bestsellers, but this guarded account of his career in the book trade won’t be one of them
The childhood terrors of Judith Hermann
The German writer recalls her grandmother’s collection of voodoo dolls and her father’s surreal invention of a stunted lodger living in the suspended ceiling
My obsession with ageing rock stars – by Kate Mossman
The music journalist describes a career spent interviewing the likes of Sting, Tom Jones, Brian May and Roger Taylor – each time feeling ‘something inside me ignite’
A David Bowie devotee with the air of Adrian Mole
Plodding through suburbia in Bowie’s footsteps, Peter Carpenter might be Sue Townsend’s hero incarnate – and there’s even an omnipresent friend called Nigel
Keith McNally: ‘Still craving the success I pretend to despise’
In a self-lacerating memoir, the restaurateur describes his many regrets, dislikes and feuds with celebrities, his longing for recognition and his love of family and friends
The grooming of teenaged Linn Ullmann
Ignoring her mother Liv Ullmann’s advice, 16-year-old Linn accepted the offer of a photo shoot in Paris in 1983 – and has been haunted by the experience ever since
A cremation caper: Stealing Dad, by Sofka Zinovieff, reviewed
Part grief-memoir, part macabre escapade, Zinovieff’s latest book is inspired by her own father’s bizarre strictures regarding his funeral
Cooking up a storm of memories – Bee Wilson’s kitchenalia
A baking tin, a toast rack and a soup tureen conjure poignant reminders of the past - while Wilson’s wedding ring is transformed into the world’s smallest pastry cutter
The satisfaction of making wine the hard way
An investment banker leaves the rat race to restore a neglected vineyard in the Loire, where he decides to do as much as possible by hand, from pruning the vines to pressing the grapes
The enduring lure of Atlantis
Damian Le Bas goes in search of the fabled city beneath the waves in an attempt to overcome the grief of losing his father
‘I felt offended on behalf of my breasts’ – Jean Hannah Edelstein
When misguided well-wishers suggest to Edelstein, post-mastectomy, that she might now have ‘the breasts of her dreams’, she wants to reply that those had always been her own
Petty, malicious and tremendous fun – the Facebook office drama
Sarah Wynn-Williams’s gleeful dissections of former colleagues’ foibles were met with furious denials and the threat of legal action – guaranteeing maximum publicity for her book
William Blake still weaves his mystic spell
Philip Hoare considers the ageless, hypnotic appeal of the painter, poet, visionary and ‘one-man utopia’
Why, at 75, does Graydon Carter still feel the need to impress?
The humblebrag and name-dropping read more like a Craig Brown pastiche than the reminiscences of one of America’s most celebrated magazine editors
The danger of becoming a ‘professional survivor’
Though extraordinarily lucky to have escaped massacre in Rwanda in 1994, all Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse now seems to focus on is finding photographic evidence of her rescue
The sickness at the heart of boxing
After 30 years as a boxing correspondent, Donald McRae has seen enough, angered by the lies, dope, inadequate safety protocols and lure of Saudi sponsorship
Who will care for the carers themselves?
Caroline Elton describes the problems of looking after her profoundly autistic brother, and admits to childhood feelings of fear, guilt and resentment
The comfort of curling up with a violent thriller
When post-natal depression descends, Lucy Mangan describes reaching for Lee Child, finding catharsis in his no-nonsense villain-bashing
The sexual escapades of Edmund White sound like an improbably sordid Carry On film
The octogenarian writer seems unable to resist the burlesque, describing the most lurid encounters at an apparently droll remove
The nerdy obsessive who became the world’s richest man
Seen by fellow pupils as an obnoxious loner, Bill Gates was a rebellious teenager, challenging his teachers and ‘at war’ with his parents
The strange potency of cheap perfume
Adelle Stripe has constructed a memoir around 18 key fragrances, but it is the Body Shop’s cheery Dewberry that evokes her worst teenage experience
Red-letter days for Gilbert & George
After a successful show in Moscow in 1990, the odd couple went on to even greater triumph in China three years later, as the long-suffering curator of both exhibitions describes
