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Biography books

April 2025

  • Frances Ryan - courtesy of Frances Ryan

    Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girls’ Guide to Life by Frances Ryan review – countering the stereotypes

    The journalist’s second book offers positivity in the face of the obstacles confronting disabled girls and women
  • Portrait of Erik Satie (1866-1925), Playing the Harmonium. Artist: Rusi?ol, Santiago (1861-1931)<br>Portrait of Erik Satie (1866-1925), Playing the Harmonium. Found in the collection of Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

    Observer book of the week
    Erik Satie Three Piece Suite by Ian Penman review – the radical lord of light entertainment

    This glorious biography of the whimsical, elusive French composer celebrates the depths of his seemingly sunny music and the impact he had on other forms

    • Book of the day
      The Sleep Room by Jon Stock review – shocking tales from 1960s psychiatry

    • Book of the day
      Love and Fury: The Extraordinary Life, Death and Legacy of Joe Meek by Darryl W Bullock – review

    • Yoko by David Sheff review – a queasily one-sided defence

March 2025

  • Amanda Meade

    Weekly Beast
    A mug’s game: Murdoch press’s anti-Labor budget coverage foreshadows election attacks to come

    Amanda Meade
  • Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot at the beach in 1950 film La Vie Commence Demain (Life Begins Tomorrow).

    Book of the day
    Hidden Portraits: The Untold Stories of Six Women Who Loved Picasso by Sue Roe review – artist as lothario

  • Amanda Knox photographed in February this year. She is pictured sitting cross-legged with a cat in her lap in front of a bookcase

    ‘I call us the Sisterhood of Ill Repute’: Amanda Knox on bonding with Monica Lewinsky and Lorena Bobbitt

  • John Lennon and Paul McCartney (right) by the Mersey in Liverpool, 1963.

    John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie review – a Beatles bromance

  • Did my Jewish great-grandfather make chemical weapons for the Nazis? Author Joe Dunthorne on a dark legacy

  • ‘The Polynesians loved him’: the astonishing revelations that cast Paul Gauguin in a new light

  • Book of the day
    The Leopard in My House by Mark Steel review – finding the funny side of living with cancer

February 2025

  • Boris and Carrie Johnson leaving No 10 after his resignation in 2022.

    Ungovernable by Simon Hart review – House of ill repute

  • ‘It was a huge buzz’ … McCartney during the Wings Over the World tour, Philadelphia, 1976

    ‘Madcap adventures’: Paul McCartney co-authors book about his time in Wings

  • Posed portrait of James Longman.

    The Inherited Mind by James Longman review – a moving memoir of mental illness in the family

  • Tuppence Middleton photographed by Pål Hansen for the Observer New Review. Styling by Hope Lawrie. Hair by Chad Maxwell. Makeup by Amanda Grossman. Black wool jacket, waistcoat and trousers by Bella Freud.

    Not lighthearted craziness, or a comic disorder of the mind: what it’s like living with OCD

  • In brief: Queen James; The Paris Dancer; Melting Point – review

  • Other lives
    Catherine Peters obituary

  • Bookmark this
    ‘Pioneering’, ‘engrossing’, ‘a hymn to connection’: the best Australian books out in February

  • A Man of Few Words by Carlo Greppi review – Primo Levi’s saviour… and a tortured soul

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