Category Archives: Autobiography and memoir

‘I was on a list to be terminated’ – Sue Dobson, the spy who helped to end apartheid

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She risked arrest, torture and jail to fight racism in 1980s South Africa, and her story is being made into a film

As a white South African, Sue Dobson risked arrest, torture and imprisonment spying for the black nationalist cause during the latter days of the brutal apartheid regime. She was a middle-class woman in her 20s when she joined the African National Congress (ANC) and infiltrated the white minority government – even having a honey-pot affair with a police official to obtain information, with the full support of her husband, a fellow activist. When her cover was blown in 1989, she fled to Britain, where she sought political asylum after threats to her life.

Now, for the first time in 30 years, she is ready to talk publicly about her story – that of a “very ordinary” woman who played an extraordinary part in fighting racism.

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Baxter Dury: ‘Everything was about Dad. It was the only way he knew how to survive’

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The musician talks about growing up with a pop star dad, escaping his shadow – and the 6ft 7in drug dealer who lived with them

• Read an exclusive extract from Chaise Longue: ‘After a certain point of drinking, Dad’s behaviour became a lottery’

Baxter Dury strolls up to the pub, casually dressed and apologetic. The indie musician, known for his stylish suits, is wearing a white vest and unbuttoned denim shirt. His face is even whiter than the vest. Food poisoning. He ate oysters the other day, and has never been so sick. He orders a pineapple juice and soda water, sheepishly. “That’s going to be the headline, isn’t it?” The 2010 biopic about his father was named Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – after one of Ian Dury’s most celebrated songs, and a fair summary of his life.

But we’re not here to talk about Dad, says Baxter, a successful musician in his own right. It’s 21 years since his father died, and 19 since Baxter recorded his debut album, the fabulously titled Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift. Don’t get me wrong, he says, he loved the old man, but he’s got Ian Dury fatigue. He’s tired of the comparisons – their music, voice, looks and lifestyle.

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Leïla Slimani: ‘I think I’m always writing about women, domination, violence’

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The French-Moroccan author on why she writes, the complexity of identity, and the first book of a trilogy based on her family history

Author Leïla Slimani, 39, grew up in Rabat, Morocco, and moved to Paris when she was 17. Her first novel, Adèle, a melancholy story about a nymphomaniac mother in her 30s, was published in France in 2014. In 2016, she was the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt, for her second novel, Lullaby, about a nanny who kills the baby and toddler in her care. In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron appointed her as his personal representative for promoting French language and culture.

Last year, Slimani published a nonfiction book, Sex and Lies, a collection of intimate testimonies from Moroccan women about their secret lives. Her latest book, The Country of Others, is the first novel in a planned trilogy based on her family history. Set in the late 1940s and 50s, it centres on her maternal grandparents during Morocco’s period of decolonisation. Slimani lives with her husband and two children in Paris.

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Jehan Sadat obituary

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Champion of social justice and women’s rights in Egypt before and after the assassination of her husband, President Anwar Sadat

Jehan Sadat, who has died aged 88 of cancer, spent most of her life promoting social justice and women’s rights in Egypt. She continued to campaign decades after her husband, President Anwar Sadat, was assassinated, on 6 October 1981, by militants in the army avenging the imprisonment of fellow Islamists and condemning the 1978 Camp David accords that he had signed with Israel.

As a girl in Cairo, Jehan had explored the streets of her neighbourhood of Al-Manial, attributing her self-confidence to her supportive parents. She said that her fight against gender inequality started during her schooldays, when she was encouraged to focus on subjects such as sewing and cooking in preparation for marriage rather than the sciences that would lead to a university career. “I have always regretted that decision. I would never allow my daughters to close off their futures that way,” she wrote in her autobiography, A Woman of Egypt (1987).

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‘A madman with millions of followers’: what the new Trump books tell us

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Books show how close the US came to disaster, and document an unprecedented moment in US history that is not yet over

This week, the Guardian reported that what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents describe Donald Trump as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual”. Vladimir Putin, the documents say, therefore decided to assist Trump’s rise to power in 2016 as a way to weaken America.

Related: Frankly, We Did Win This Election review: a devastating dispatch from Trumpworld

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‘Something had gone horribly wrong’: me, Mick Jagger and the lost autobiography

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Ghostwriter Barry Coleman says he was given two ‘awful’ weeks to finish an entire book with the Rolling Stone – then the singer pulled the plug in case it was too dull

Barry Coleman still remembers the day in 1983 when he was called by his editor at the publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson and told: “We’ve got a problem. Can you come in … tomorrow?”

“The urgency was a bit disorienting,” he recalls. “Something had clearly gone horribly wrong.”

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‘I’m still alive’: Gomorrah author hails court victory over mafia threats

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Roberto Saviano says that a court has shown that the crime clans – whose threats forced him to live with a bodyguard – are not invincible

The internationally renowned anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano has declared that “journalism has been vindicated; words are vindicated – and so am I”, after a landmark judgment in Rome over threats to his life.

Judges ruled on Monday that a courtroom manoeuvre 13 years ago by a Camorra mafia boss and his lawyer constituted a threat to Saviano’s life, and that of a colleague – Rosaria Capacchione, then of the Naples daily Il Mattino – condemning the journalists to live ever since in the shadows, under bodyguard.

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I’ve spent so much of my life dreaming of homes I cannot afford | Deborah Levy

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In this extract from Real Estate, the final instalment of Deborah Levy’s ‘living autobiography’ series, she reflects on fantasy properties, empty nests and the relationship between property and freedom

I walked to Central Park. It had suddenly become warm and I was so jet lagged I thought I might faint. I found a place near the entrance to the park under a tree and collapsed on to the grass. Lying on my back, looking up at the big American sky between the leaves, I saw something hanging from the branches. It was a key. A key on a red ribbon that someone had hung on a branch and forgotten to take with them. I wondered if they had deliberately left it behind because they were never going to return to wherever the key belonged. Or perhaps they wanted to close a door on a chapter of their life and leaving the key behind was a gesture of this desire. There is always something secret and mysterious about keys. They are the instrument to enter and exit, open and close, lock and unlock various desirable and undesirable domains.

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Beautiful Things review: Hunter Biden as prodigal son and the Trumpists’ target

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The president’s son recounts his struggles and his father’s love with honesty – yet still seems blind to glaring political realities

Robert Hunter Biden is not a rock star. Instead, the sole surviving son of Joe Biden – senator, vice-president, president – is a lawyer by training and a princeling by happenstance. Regardless, life on the edge comes with consequences.

Related: Lucky review: how Biden beat Trump – and doubters like Obama and Hillary

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On my radar: Brett Anderson’s cultural highlights

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The Suede frontman on his latest musical discoveries, the brilliance of Michael Clark and the enduring appeal of mudlarking by the Thames

Born in Sussex in 1967, Brett Anderson founded alternative rock band Suede in 1989 with then-girlfriend Justine Frischmann and childhood friend Mat Osman. Billed by Melody Maker as “the best new band in Britain”, Suede released five albums including their self-titled debut and Coming Up, before disbanding in 2003. Anderson went on to front the Tears and release four solo albums. In 2010 Suede reformed and released a further three albums, the latest of which is 2018’s The Blue Hour. Anderson will perform with Charles Hazlewood and Paraorchestra as part of the Gŵyl 2021 festival, 6-7 March.

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‘The air reeks of invisible danger’: an extract from Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic

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In this extract from her new book Breathtaking, palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke reveals the pressure and pain of splitting her time between hospice patients and hospital Covid wards

In January 2020, novel coronaviruses are nowhere on my mind. Like everyone working in the NHS, I am steeled for a home-grown catastrophe. For no matter how many patients lie on trolleys in corridors, how many ambulances sit trapped on hospital forecourts, how many photos go viral of toddlers slumped on their parents’ coats, receiving oxygen on the floor of a beleaguered A&E, nothing ever truly changes. These days, the annual NHS “winter crisis” is both dreaded and reliable as clockwork.

The numbers are so large, and repeated so frequently, they have long been leached of their force: 17,000 hospital beds lost since 2010; only 2.5 beds per 1,000 people in the UK, compared with three times that number in Germany; unfilled vacancies for more than 10,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses.

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Tom Templeton: ‘I suspect doctors have realised how therapeutic it can be to write books’

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The former Observer writer and now GP talks about his new book, 34 Patients, and the challenges he has faced during the pandemic

How has life changed for you at the surgery during the pandemic?
The biggest change has been having to talk to patients on the phone rather than seeing them in person. We only see around three per day now in person.

Do you miss seeing people face to face?
Totally. It’s quite right that we do it the way we do but I love being with the patients and having that connection.

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Tina Turner: ‘When I was in the zone, it was like I was flying’

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She was a rock’n’roll powerhouse who electrified audiences worldwide. As Tina Turner releases a guide to happiness, she talks to playwright V (formerly Eve Ensler) about how she found the strength to overcome illness, abuse and tragedy

The first time I experienced Tina Turner in the flesh, I was a 16-year-old hippy chick doused in patchouli oil. I didn’t just see and hear Ms Turner sing Proud Mary at the Fillmore East in New York City – I felt her in every cell of my teenage body. I was transfixed by the ecstasy of her thunderous hips and legs, the vibrating canopy of her shaking fringe, the irrefutable bidding of her sultry, raw voice.

She was female sexuality fully embodied and unleashed. She catalysed the same in me and in multitudes across the planet, selling more than 200m records in her lifetime. The queen of rock’n’roll seemed as much shaman as singer. I knew instinctively that she had suffered abuse and pain. We survivors have a kind of radar.

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A Promised Land by Barack Obama review – an impressive but incomplete memoir

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Gary Younge on a memoir with vivid detail and captivating pillow talk, but one that leaves out too much to give a clear view of Obama’s first term

“I guess the question for you, Mr President, is: ‘Do you feel lucky?’” In his new autobiography, Barack Obama recalls being asked this by his director of legislative affairs, Phil Schiliro, at a time when his options for passing comprehensive healthcare reform were narrowing.

“I looked at him and smiled. ‘Where are we, Phil?’”
Schiliro paused, assuming a catch. ‘The Oval Office?’
‘And what’s my name?’
‘Barack Obama.’
Obama beamed. ‘Barack Hussein Obama. And I’m here with you in the Oval Office. Brother, I always feel lucky.’

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Barack Obama on the moment he won the presidency – exclusive extract

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In this excerpt from A Promised Land, the former president remembers the anxious run-up to the 2008 election. Scroll down to hear a clip of him reading from it

More than anything campaign-related, it was news out of Hawaii that tempered my mood in October’s waning days. My sister Maya called, saying the doctors didn’t think Toot [Obama’s grandmother] would last much longer, perhaps no more than a week. She was now confined to a rented hospital bed in the living room of her apartment, under the care of a hospice nurse and on palliative drugs. Although she had startled my sister with a sudden burst of lucidity the previous evening, asking for the latest campaign news along with a glass of wine and a cigarette, she was now slipping in and out of consciousness.

And so, 12 days before the election, I made a 36-hour trip to Honolulu to say goodbye. Maya was waiting for me when I arrived at Toot’s apartment; I saw that she had been sitting on the couch with a couple of shoeboxes of old photographs and letters. “I thought you might want to take some back with you,” she said. I picked up a few photos from the coffee table. My grandparents and my eight-year-old mother, laughing in a grassy field at Yosemite. Me at the age of four or five, riding on Gramps’s shoulders as waves splashed around us. The four of us with Maya, still a toddler, smiling in front of a Christmas tree.

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Obama hails arrival of a more ‘caring government’ as memoir launches – video

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In an interview marking the launch of his memoir A Promised Land, Barack Obama tells Oprah Winfrey that the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will help lead the US back to the 'competent, caring government we so badly need'. 

He lamented the standard of governance over the past four years, saying Biden and Harris will 'level set' and show that the presidency will not label journalists 'enemies of the state' or 'routinely lie'  

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Zen and the art of torso maintenance: Matthew McConaughey’s guide to life

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In a new book, Hollywood’s ‘easy-livin’ superstar bares all about his route to the top. Here are some choice nuggets of McConna-sense

The biggest question in the universe, writes Matthew McConaughey in his new autobiography (of sorts) is “WHOWHATWHEREWHENHOW?? – and that’s the truth. WHY? is even bigger.” With Greenlights, his love letter to livin, McConaughey attempts to answer these questions and others, such as why he never puts a “g” on the end of “living” – “because life’s a verb”.

Greenlights is not a memoir, though it tells true stories from his life in chronological order. Nor is it “an advice book”. It is “an approach book”, bringing together McConaughey’s insights from 35 years of writing journals, and more of collecting bumper stickers. These “philosophies can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted”. A few are shared here.

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Patti Smith: ‘I feel the unrest of the world in the pit of my stomach’

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The rock star and poet on solitude, her lifelong friend Sam Shepard, and writing her latest memoir

Patti Smith, rock star, poet, visual artist and writer, won the 2010 National book award with her memoir Just Kids. The Year of the Monkey, her moving postscript – about loss, serendipity, friendship and hope – is out now in paperback (Bloomsbury).

Did you plan The Year of the Monkey or did it almost write itself?
Truthfully, I had no goal. It was the end of 2015. I’d had concerts at the Fillmore in San Francisco and was supposed to go on a trip with my good friend Sandy Pearlman. But he had an accident and was in a coma and I was without a plan. I don’t drive, so decided to linger to be in his proximity and, being alone, started keeping a journal. I find writing a journal is like having an imaginary friend.

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Alan Davies: ‘I’ve become a huge enemy of silence and secrecy’

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The comedian and actor has written a raw and compelling book about his early life, including the abuse he suffered from his father

Your memoir details personal experiences you have never talked about in public before. This includes the sexual abuse you suffered as a child, at the hands of your father, after your mother’s death from leukaemia. Why write about these experiences now?
I kept feeling their presence in their absence from so many parts of my life. I didn’t have the courage, strength or fortitude to confront them. They were never in my comedy. I’d always been focused to get to the next milestone, the next show, the next fringe. I’d also already written a memoir [2010’s Teenage Revolution: Growing Up in the 80s] but all the things that mattered were missing.

In 2016, you started a part-time MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths University. Was that to help tell this story?
I wanted to get this material out of myself, but I was writing about my life in the third person at first, workshopping it as short stories. Then, towards the end of the first year, I wrote something for an assessment, which became a chapter in the book, relatively unchanged [a chapter called Hands, which details the first incident of sexual abuse Davies suffered, at the age of “eight or nine”]. The assessment just had my student number on it, so it felt safe to write it. The tutor feedback was anonymous, too. It allowed me to present a version of myself where nothing was concealed from view.

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