Inside the mind of Luigi Mangione
A biography of the man on trial for anti-corporate murder seeks to disrupt the hero narrative that has grown around…
ByBiographies
Read all the latest reviews from New Statesman writers of biographies and memoirs.
Tupac Shakur: lion or loser?
The mythologised rapper was a natural shapeshifter – who no one ever truly got to know
By
How Richard Holmes humanised Tennyson
The biographer of England’s great poets reveals the secrets of inhabiting his subjects’ lives
By
Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary is a fierce chronicle of self-invention
The novelist and activist details how she fashioned herself out of collisions with her mother
By
Constantine Cavafy’s melancholy and majesty
The 20th-century Greek-Alexandrian poet wrote of a faded grandeur that stood for all humanity.
By
Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventures in storytelling
A new biography reveals the author as shaped by conflicting influences – and affirms his status as a serious writer.
By
Asa Briggs, professor of everything
The historian and educator’s achievements were as long and varied as his contacts book.
By
Samuel Pepys’s diary of a somebody
Kate Loveman’s history of a national treasure preserves Pepys’s charm while revealing a discomfiting historical world.
By
Xi Jinping’s daddy issues
The Chinese president’s concept of power was forged by the suffering of his revolutionary father, Xi Zhongxun.
By
Jacinda Ardern’s unexamined life
In her memoir, the former prime minister seems more concerned with the symbols of politics than the actual politics the prompted…
By
Giorgia Meloni’s selective memory
The Italian prime minister’s autobiography revises her and her country’s history. But Meloni’s success is a template for right populist…
By
Martha Wainwright, in her own right
The musician’s career has been helped and hampered by her famous name – and her live shows embody her struggle…
By
The ghost of Muriel Spark
In her work and life the writer was obsessed with biography – but when she authorised her own she loathed…
By
Gertrude Stein’s quest for fame
The modernist phenomenon believed bad attention was better than none at all.
By
The Yoko Ono problem
As David Sheff’s new biography reveals, decades of suspicion aimed at the provocative artist, musician and widow have obscured her…
By
The contested life of Roger Casement
The Irish nationalist was caught in the fault lines between empire and nation, colonised and coloniser, public face and private…
By
The confessions of Pope Francis
Can Hope, his autobiographical meditations on migration, sexuality and war, assuage a Catholic church in crisis?
By
James Salter’s machismo myth
The all-action American novelist is praised for his virile heroics – but it was his instinct for “the feminine” that…
By
The making of an American conservative
Rob Henderson’s memoir Troubled paints a bleak picture of poverty in the US. Are liberal “luxury beliefs” to blame?
By
Searching for Frantz Fanon
Was the elusive revolutionary thinker naive, or ahead of his time?
By