Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

This dazzling memoir promises to be a courageously frank, honest and poignant read. It will detail some of Fry's most turbulent and least-well-known years, with writing that will excite you, make you laugh uproariously, move you, inform you, and, above all, surprise you.

Following on from his hugely successful books, Moab Is My Washpot and The Fry Chronicles, comes the third chapter in Stephen Fry's life. This unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of More Fool Me is performed by Stephen Fry himself.

Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure. Now, at last, at the age of 80, she has finally decided to tell her extraordinary life story. And it's far richer and stranger than any part she's played.

Few people serve time in prison before studying at Cambridge. You might be surprised to know that Stephen Fry is one of them. Moab is My Washpot, the remarkable story of Stephen Fry's tumultuous early life, is by turns funny, shocking, tender, delicious, sad, lyrical, bruisingly frank and addictively listenable.

Meet Shane Jenek. Raised in the Brisbane suburbs by loving parents, Shane realises from a young age that he's not like all the other boys. He finds his tribe at a performing arts agency, where he discovers his passion for song, dance and performance. Shane makes a promise to himself - to find a bigger stage. Meet Courtney Act. Born in Sydney around the turn of the millennium, Courtney makes her name in the gay bars of Oxford Street and then on Australian Idol.

Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world's biggest stars for nearly 20 years. He is loved across the nation for his delight in the peculiar and for his ability to find humour and a common ground in all that life brings.

Multi-award-winning Hannah Gadsby broke comedy with their show Nanette. Now they take us through the defining moments in their life and their powerful decision to tell the truth—no matter the cost. Harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person, to their ever-evolving relationship with comedy, and their struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, finally arriving at the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.

'Between the Stops is a sort of a memoir, my sort. It's about a bus trip really, because it's my view from the Number 12 bus (mostly top deck, the seat at the front on the right), a double-decker that plies its way from Dulwich, in South East London, where I was living, to where I sometimes work - at the BBC, in the heart of the capital. It's not a sensible way to write a memoir at all, probably, but it's the way things pop into your head as you travel, so it's my way'.

The stand-up comedian of his generation. Star of stage and screen. Tireless supporter of charity. Runner. Political campaigner. Fashion icon. Human. There is no one quite like Eddie Izzard. This is the story of how a boy who wanted to become a professional footballer and win the lead in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat found comedy.

In January 2021, Steph Lentz was fired from her job as an English teacher at a Sydney Christian school after she came out as a lesbian. A hardcore Christian during her teens and 20s, Steph once preached against homosexuality and defended her church's conservative teachings about marriage and sex – that is, until she fell in love with a woman at her church and her world turned upside-down. In the midst of ongoing debates about religious freedom and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people in Australia, Steph's story is timely and necessary.

Writing in his own singular voice, Barry Diller delivers both an astute and entertaining business memoir and a surprisingly frank coming-of-age story. After starting his career in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, Diller went on to have one of the most extraordinary ascents in show business history, inventing the TV Movie of the Week for ABC at age twenty-seven, becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures at age thirty-two, and launching the Fox TV network at age forty-four.

Rebel Rising follows Rebel Wilson's incredible journey of "making it," constantly questioning "Am I good enough?", "Will I ever find love?" and "Will I ever change and become healthy?" Rebel writes for the first time about her most personal and important moments in her life—from fertility issues, weight gain and loss, sexuality, overcoming shyness, rejections and, well...okay there's at least one story thrown in about Brad Pitt! It's all here. This memoir shows us how to love ourselves, while making us laugh uncontrollably.

Meet the Law family - eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide: Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humorist. Join him as he tries to answer some puzzling questions: Why won't his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love? Hilarious and moving, The Family Law is a linked series of tales from a wonderful Australian talent.

Tim Pocock was a born performer. At ten, he took to the stage as a professional opera singer. At twenty-two, he launched his acting career in the blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine and went on to star in the beloved series Dance Academy. But Tim's biggest role was one he never auditioned for - the role he played at home as a devout, straight son. Raised in a conservative Catholic family and attending a school with links to Opus Dei, Tim always knew that being gay was out of the question.

From the age of twelve, Alison Mau wanted to be a journalist like her father. He was a beer-swilling, straight-talking Aussie who was rough around the edges but could quote passages of Hamlet at will. He taught Ali everything—from how to skin a rabbit and throw a punch to how to craft a sharp sentence—and she craved his validation as she navigated the sexist badlands of Australian print and television journalism through the 1980s and '90s.

A parish priest in Northamptonshire; a former rock-star whose number-one hit with The Communards was the biggest-selling single of 1986; the regular host of BBC Radio 4's SATURDAY LIVE - these three people are not usually embodied in one person. The Reverend Richard Coles' memoir offers his rich and personal insights into one of the most diverse of lives, encompassed with the wit and humour he brings to his popular radio show. Richard Coles gives the phrase 'time management' a new emphasis.

Does peaking in high school ruin you for life? Was Miley Cyrus right, is it all about the climb (when it comes to building a career?) And what - scientifically - is the best way to mend a broken heart? Comedian Suzi Ruffell is considering life's big questions. In this brutally honest, funny, and often moving memoir, Suzi winningly tells her life story, and asks a host of experts to answer the tricky questions it prompts along the way. Diamond life advice comes from the likes of Elizabeth Day, Dolly Alderton, Charlene Douglas, Laura Bates, Dr Kirren Schnack, and more.

Discover the extraordinary diaries of the real Anne Lister. When this volume of Anne Lister's diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. The editor, Helena Whitbread, had spent years painstakingly researching and transcribing Lister's extensive journals, much of which were written in an elaborate code - what Lister called her 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and at times, explicit, detail. Until then, Anne Lister's lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at; this was the first time her story had been told.

In the early 2000s, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey—both young artists trying to figure it all out—met at auditions for an unknown little TV show. Given that it was a show about lesbians living in Los Angeles, with the first ever ensemble cast of openly queer female characters, Kate and Leisha knew the project was going to be unlike anything else out there—that is, if it even got picked up.

Before RuPaul's Drag Race became a worldwide phenomenon, Drag was mostly an underground art form, performed by the daring and the quick-witted, with maximum energy and a minimal budget. This is the story of one of the galaxy's greatest queens, Alaska Thunderf--k 5000, as she transforms from wearing dresses made of trash bags because she has to, to wearing dresses made of trash bags because she wants to.