Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life
by Anna Funder (Knopf, 2023)
audiobook read by Jane Slavin & Arianwen Parkes-Lockwood (Bolinda, 2023)
The reconstructed biography of Eileen O’Shaughnessy, a remarkable woman whom the patriarchal gatekeepers, when not omitting her altogether, render anonymous as merely George Orwell’s wife. Funder confronts the historical record to wrest Eileen’s due back from oblivion. Orwell himself emerges greatly diminished.
Hello, Darlings! The Authorized Biography of Kenny Everett
by James Hogg & Robert Sellers (Bantam, 2013)
Kenny Everett once wrote an autobiography; or rather, he didn’t. It was ghost-written by a friend and Kenny didn’t even read it. He wasn’t interested in the past. For those who are, Hogg and Sellers’ comprehensively researched biography is well worth reading.
Not Fade Away: The Life and Music of Buddy Holly
by John Gribbin (Icon, 2009)
Rock and roll pioneer Buddy Holly was only twenty-two when he died. Science writer (but music fan) John Gribbin therefore focuses much of this small, poignant biography on Holly’s songs and their composition. The end hangs untimely across any sense of celebration.
Orwell’s Cough: Diagnosing the Medical Maladies & Last Gasps of the Great Writers
by John Ross (Oneworld, 2013)
Whereas the medical diagnoses alone would have made for a much shorter book, (Dr) Ross has used the subject of medicine as a unifying theme by which to biograph and contextualise a dozen famous writers, astutely dissecting their lives and (squalid) times.
The King’s Speech
by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi (Quercus, 2010)
This significant if straightforward dual biography of speech therapist Lionel Logue and King George VI, supplemented by excerpts from both men’s correspondence, will be of particular interest to those familiar with the film but not the liberties this took in dramatising events.
Seinfeld: the Making of an American Icon; the Unauthorised Biography
by Jerry Oppenheimer (HarperCollins, 2002)
Further to Oppenheimer’s curious use of the definite article in prefacing ‘unauthorised biography’, Australians may question his authority, finding it difficult to read beyond the slipshod fact-checking (page seven) of placing Seinfeld’s father at a WWII army base in Rock Hampton [sic].