autobiography

Daniel Lavelle knows how the story of his homelessness might look to the casual observer. Viewed in isolation, he notes, “the circumstances that precipitated my journey to the streets seem entirely of my own making”. As well as racking up considerable rent arrears, he had been drinking heavily, lost a series of low-paid jobs and moved out of his flat voluntarily. But, as we learn in his candid yet resolutely un-self-pitying memoir, there were complicating factors, among them his ADHD (his psychiatrist said his was the…

The first memoir from the former lead singer of Pulp would have been better titled A History of Jarvis in 100 Objects. That’s what it is: an illustrated guide to the things that make Cocker who he is. He doesn’t appear in many of the photos; the great majority show his collection of ephemera: a 20-year-old pack of Wrigley’s Extra gum, a fragment of Imperial Leather soap with its old-style label still attached. That’s him in a nutshell: driven by a lifelong love of the everyday, perceiving romance and poignance in items…

To be a musician is to learn to live with paradox. That is the conclusion that Jeremy Denk, a first-rank American concert pianist, has come to after more than 40 years of work on his playing. In classical music, there are always more details to be fine-tuned and technical challenges to be overcome, but the obsession with total mastery can also be what keeps you from obtaining it. Denk’s mentor, the Hungarian-American pianist György Sebők, once told his pupil that his big problem was that he was a perfectionist – even…

If you have ever wondered from where the death-row lawyer Clive Stafford Smith gets his intransigent, crusading spirit, this vivid, inquiring memoir provides much of the evidence. It is set up as a book not about its author but about the lives of two very different men who helped to define him. The first is Stafford Smith’s father, Dick, a wildly volatile man with bipolar disorder, who squandered the family fortune and blamed everyone but himself. The second is Larry Lonchar, an inmate in Georgia State Prison facing a…

It is 16 August 2020 and Alan Bennett and his partner are on their customary evening walk. Given that 86-year-old Bennett is hobbled with rheumatoid arthritis, this is hardly an ambitious excursion – literally three minutes “round the block” of their north London street. Suddenly the windows fly open and neighbours start banging pots and clapping. Since he needs to lean heavily on his walking stick, Bennett is unable to join in, but he compensates by standing in the street and nodding enthusiastically. Until, that is, the…

Sanjay Khan is excited about unveiling his autobiography, "The Best Mistakes of My Life", which will take the readers to his world of films, family, his near-death accident and more. The veteran Bollywood actor says it will make a great book for movie adaptation. The book will have a grand pre-Diwali launch on Sunday in Mumbai. "I received a call from Penguin (Penguin Random House India) and was requested to write my autobiography. That moment, I had silence in my mind and then suddenly, memories hit me. I…