Biography from The Real Book Shop

What an enjoyable and engaging book. I loved all the granular detail of boat living, the portraits of the various characters who live on the water, and the moving story of Danie's family and her teenage years. The way she describes feeling powerless when in thrall to older boys will be painfully resonant to lots of women. Cathy Rentzenbrink, author… Read more about this item

Love, Nina meets Black Books: a wry and hilarious account of life in Scotland's biggest second-hand bookshop and the band of eccentrics and book-obsessives who work there 'The Diary Of A Bookseller is warm (unlike Bythell's freezing-cold shop) and funny, and deserves to become one of those bestsellers that irritate him so much.' (Mail on Sunday) 'Utterly compelling and Bythell has a… Read more about this item

Eulogised and ostracised, James Butler Hickok was alternately labelled courageous, affable, and self-confident; cowardly, cold-blooded, and drunken; a fine specimen of manhood; an overdressed dandy with perfumed hair; an unequaled marksman; and a poor shot. Born in Illinois in 1837, he was shot dead in Deadwood only 39 years later. By then both famous and infamous, he was widely known… Read more about this item

Drawing on major new sources hitherto unexamined by western historians, Douglas Smith's Rasputin is the definitive biography of this extraordinary figure for a generation. Nearly a century after his murder, Rasputin remains as divisive a figure as ever. Was he really a horse thief and a hard-drinking ruffian in his youth? Was he a a devout Orthodox Christian, or was he in… Read more about this item

"You can't beat this story for drama. . . . An omnibus of everything ever known, spoken, or written about Doc Holliday." —Publishers Weekly "An engagingly written, persuasively argued, solidly documented work of scholarship that will surely take its place in the literature of the Old West." —Booklist In Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, the historian Gary Roberts takes aim at the most… Read more about this item

Memoire of an Italian Jewish writer, first published in 1947. Describes his arrest and incarceration at Auschwitz concentration camp. Translated by Stuart Woolf. Etchings by Jane Joseph. In navy slipcase. Navy cloth boards with silver-coloured design. CONDITION: book - new condition. Slipcase - light shelf wear.

Very clean copy in unclipped dust jacket (covered in protective poly cover).

Autobiographical by Henry Williamson Publisher: Faber & Faber Date published: 1939 FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING Format: Hardback with dust jacket Condition: Dust jacket: dirty and worn; has been reinforced inside. Book: green cloth boards - bumped and worn around edges. Pages: ownership inscription on front free end paper; edges of pages grubby; pages clean and readable; binding good.

A portrait of the work and character of the esteemed writer, critic, and composer assesses his personal struggles while separating out the facts from the fiction surrounding his famous antic disposition and tracing the creation of such pieces as A Clockwork Orange.

A discussion of one of the great interpreters of Japan. The Japanese have always revered Hearn and this book shows the West why he is revered. Experts look at his writings and discuss his integrity as an observer and interpreter of Japan and the Japanese.

Biography of Thomas Jefferson. No dust jacket. First edition 1942. Original blue cloth boards. Frontispiece of Thomas Jefferson; 459pp. Family tree diagram of Thomas Jefferson in the back.

Since her death, Marilyn Monroe has been the subject of some 600 books, scores of which claim to be biographies, and all of which promise to uncover the "real Marilyn". But the biographies can't agree on many of the most sensational details of the life of the 20th century's most famous woman. Rather than offering another "definitive life", Sarah Churchwell's… Read more about this item

A portrait of Robert Maxwell by the Foreign Editor of the "Daily Mirror", who was also one of Maxwell's few companions and confidantes outside the immediate family. The author was party to extraordinary events and conversations and provides a dimension to Maxwell's life which is unknown. The author presents Maxwell's life as one of greed, self-indulgence and a ruthless determination… Read more about this item

Nearing 70, and in what would be the last decade of his life, H.G. Wells fell in love at least three times - once with the much younger Baroness Budberg, and soon thereafter with two well-born Americans, Constance Coolidge and Martha Gelhorn, 25 and 40 years his junior respectively. These would constitute what Wells himself described as his "last flounderings… Read more about this item

The life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a nineteenth century playwright and family, with connections to Dorchester.

"Finally, the Freud biography we have long been waiting for. With the history of Europe in the background, we follow with fascination Freud′s journey from an impoverished childhood filled with losses to worldly fame, ending in exile in England. We come to understand the impact of Freud′s difficult personality on the development of his brilliant as well as questionable theoretical… Read more about this item