The ghost of Muriel Spark
In her work and life the writer was obsessed with biography – but when she authorised her own she loathed…
ByBiographies
Read all the latest reviews from New Statesman writers of biographies and memoirs.
Gertrude Stein’s quest for fame
The modernist phenomenon believed bad attention was better than none at all.
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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…
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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…
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The confessions of Pope Francis
Can Hope, his autobiographical meditations on migration, sexuality and war, assuage a Catholic church in crisis?
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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…
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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?
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Searching for Frantz Fanon
Was the elusive revolutionary thinker naive, or ahead of his time?
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The triumph of King Charles
Robert Hardman’s obsequious biography pays court to a monarch who is enjoying his power over a deferential nation.
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József Debreczeni’s letter from the land of the dead
A rediscovered memoir from an Auschwitz survivor offers powerful lessons for our own reckonings with the Holocaust.
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The visions of Werner Herzog
In creating wild and strange new worlds, the German film-maker reveals the truth of our own.
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Elon Musk’s death drive
The tech billionaire built a world that he could rule – then allowed it to destroy him.
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The lies we tell about Joan Didion
The late author may be the most misunderstood writer in the American canon.
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The madness of Burton and Taylor
Roger Lewis’s book about the lives of the married actors isn’t really a biography – it’s a fever dream.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lessons for losers
In his unlikely fourth act, the former movie star is a self-help guru who trades in the toughest of tough…
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Britney Spears’s American horror story
The singer’s memoir of her conservatorship is full of cartoonish villains and medieval misogyny. But this isn’t a fable – it’s…
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How the Barclay brothers built and wrecked an empire
The twins accrued hotels, newspapers and a fortress on their own island – then their fortune vanished.
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Why Britney Spears will never be free
The Woman in Me shows how trapped the singer has become.
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What Daniel Dennett gets wrong
Is consciousness an illusion? Only a philosopher could convince himself of something as implausible.
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John le Carré, the great deceiver
The duplicity that defined his spy novels also enabled his relentless pursuit of sexual pleasure.
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