| At My Mother’s Knee… | Paul O’Grady | Bantam Press |
| Coming Back to Me | Marcus Trescothick | HarperSport |
| Dear Fatty | Dawn French | Century |
| Dreams From My Father | Barack Obama | Canongate |
| Miracles of Life | J.G. Ballard | HarperPerennial |
| That’s Another Story | Julie Walters | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
In the last few years, it’s been celebrity biographies which have proved most popular with bookbuyers. But recently too many books by reality TV stars and highly paid but not necessarily successful sportsplayers have made many readers decide that fame alone is insufficient; what we really want is a life story worth telling.
Paul O’Grady, Dawn French and Julie Walters all depicted the endurance and heartache of their respective rises to national adulation with life stories told with honesty, wit and self-deprecation. Marcus Trescothick bared in soul in recounting a very public breakdown.
The contrast between Barack Obama’s humble origins and the privileged life of his predecessor reassured the American public, and his readers around the world, that a human heart just like ours beats inside the White House. J G Ballard defied any suggestion of waning powers by producing an autobiography as fine as the best of his fiction.
So, which book do you think should win Tesco Biography of the Year?
How can anyone on this list compare with Barack Obama? A couple of dodgey celeb biographies, a failed sportsman, a daytime presenter. Only Ballard offers competition to the American president, in my opinion.
Julie Walters has a great story to tell. She’s had such an active and colourful career as a comedienne and actress that it’s hard to see how she couldn’t win this award. Even Barack Obama hasn’t led such an eventful life. In fact, he hasn’t led a life yet!!
Surely, it’s only a matter of counting the days until ‘Dreams From My Father’ is declared the winner? I would be staggered if another book won.
For my own part I’d go for ‘Miracles of Life’ by J.G. Ballard. Fascinating stuff by a great British writer.
I agree with Adam R about Ballard: in a way the details of his life, remarkable as they are, are almost irrelevant, as he writes so well, it would have been interesting whatever.
But I’m not sure about Marcus Trescothick being on the list. He’s brave to tell his story and risk further public embarassment, so full marks for that, but wasn’t his book ghostwritten?