Memoirs

Showing 65–80 of 128 resultsSorted by latest

  • Cry When the Baby Cries

    £12.99

    A glorious antidote to parenting books, this darkly humorous candid and insightful graphic memoir brings the early years of parenthood to life – in all their chaos, wonder and delirium. Intimate, relatable and very funny, Becky Barnicoat explores everything from the anatomy of the hospital bag to the frantic obsession with putting your baby down drowsy but awake, to the tyranny of gentle parenting. From pregnancy to the feral toddler years, Barnicoat extends a sticky hand to all new parents grappling with the impossible but joyous jigsaw puzzle of their lives.

  • Alone in Japan

    £25.00

    When Tom Feiling moved to Tokyo as a student in the early nineties, Japan was a beacon of the future: a rising superpower, a technology giant, a global symbol of prosperity, civility and success. When he returned 24 years later, the country was still a sign of things to come – but, he began to realize, it was no longer a beacon. It was a warning. This is a unique account of contemporary Japan, which travels from the quiet of its furthest flung villages to the aspiration and dynamism of its cities. It tells the story of how, from the mid-seventies onwards, Japanese society unknowingly embarked on a vast, silent process of transformation that is still unfolding today.

  • Mother Tongue Tied

    £10.99

    More than half of the world’s population can speak more than one language fluently and over a third of the population in the United Kingdom is multilingual. And yet life in multiple languages is rarely discussed publicly, and the pressure to keep heritage languages alive has become a private conflict for millions. Linguist Malwina Gudowska, herself trilingual, takes us inside that private struggle, shedding light on the ways in which we navigate language, its power to shape and reshape lives, and the ripple effects felt far beyond any one home or any one language. It takes one generation for a family language to die. One generation – like mother to child. ‘Mother Tongue Tied’ is about the emotional weight of raising multilingual children while grappling with your own identity and notions of home; as a child of immigrants, and as a new mother.

  • Bare

    £10.99

    Aged 15, Lorna was living on the streets of Soho, trying to avoid abuse and rape whilst battling an addiction to heroin. She worked as an escort and a stripper, lost custody of her daughter, and relapsed multiple times. But, somehow, and unlike most of the people imprisoned by the streets, Lorna didn’t just survive but she flew. ‘I’ve dodged through these streets for a lifetime. I realise I have never stopped running since the day that I left the streets, never sat still, never found peace. But the process of unpicking my life means that, for the first time ever, I am actually facing what I have to do. It’s time to tell my story.’ On any given night, tens of thousands of families and individuals across the UK are experiencing homelessness. One in three people sleeping rough have experienced violence and are nine times more likely to take their own life.

  • Mother Animal

    £10.99

    Offers a startling new vision of motherhood: wild, intimate, diverse; as contested and extraordinary as the world in which we live and the animals with which we share it.

  • Starchild

    £22.00

    Maggie Aderin’s destiny was always written in the stars. From the age of three, inspired by The Clangers, her dream was to go into space. Throughout a chaotic childhood, ricocheting between divorced parents and acrimonious custody battles, she attended thirteen schools in fourteen years – but while her environment regularly changed, her fascination with the Universe did not. It became enmeshed in her desire to succeed as a scientist even when her school careers advice was to become a nurse. ‘Starchild’ is Maggie’s emotionally honest and revealing memoir, telling a story of education and prejudice, adversity and ambition, motherhood and the moon – all recounted in her characteristically warm and relatable style.

  • Our Oaken Bones

    £11.99

    Reeling from the pain of devastating miscarriages and suffering from PTSD after military adventures in Afghanistan, Merlin and his wife Lizzie decide to leave the bustle of London and return to Merlin’s childhood home, a Cornish hill farm called Cabilla in the heart of Bodmin Moor. There, they are met by unexpected challenges: a farm slipping ever further into debt, the discovery that the overgrazed and damaged woods running throughout the valley are in fact one of the UK’s last remaining fragments of Atlantic temperate rainforest, and the sudden and near catastrophic strickening by Covid of Merlin’s father, the explorer Robin. As they fall more in love with the rainforest that Merlin had adventured in as a child, so begins a fight to save not only themselves and their farm, but also one of the world’s most endangered habitats.

  • Death of an Ordinary Man

    £11.99

    Sarah Perry’s father-in-law, David, died at home nine days after a cancer diagnosis and having previously been in the good health. The speed of his illness outstripped that of the NHS and social care, so the majority of nursing fell to Sarah and her husband. They witnessed what happens to the body and spirit, hour by hour, as it approaches death. This title is an unstinting account of death by cancer, a reportage into the daily experience of caring, an exploration of the structural conditions of dying in the UK, and most importantly a testament to David’s life, that of an ordinary man. Unflinching and profoundly moving, Sarah Perry confronts the taboo surrounding death and shows us how to confront all of the terror and beauty that comes with the end of life – and how the saddest thing she has ever seen is also the best thing she’s ever done.

  • A Hymn to Life

    £22.00

    In 2024, Gisèle Pelicot inspired and moved millions of people with her astonishing courage and dignity as she chose to waive her right to anonymity in her legal fight against her husband and the 50 men accused of her sexual assault. Gisèle Pelicot’s call for shame to change sides in cases of sexual abuse, and the power of the messages she has sent out to the world, have generated an extraordinary public response and moved both women and men all over the world.

  • Take Care

    £10.99

    The life-affirming memoir of Lindsey Burrow, the working mother of three young children who has inspired the nation through her selfless commitment to husband Rob Burrow (CBE), the rugby league legend she cared for throughout his heroic battle with motor neurone disease (MND) until his death in June 2024.

  • Fire in Every Direction

    £20.00

    Both a love story and a coming-of-age tale that spans countries and continents, ‘Fire in Every Direction’ balances humor and loss, nostalgia and hope, as it takes us from the Middle East to London, and from 1948 to the present. Tareq Baconi crafts a deeply intimate, unforgettable portrait of how a political consciousness – desire and resistance – is passed down through generations.

  • Bimbo

    £22.00

    Bossy. Frigid. Spinster. Sl*t. Mumsy. Milf. Bimbo. The English language has a seemingly infinite number of judgemental and hypocritical words to describe women and their life choices. We can’t win, no matter what we do. Whether it’s on the sofa of ITV’s This Morning or online, Ashley James is a fierce advocate for women. In ‘Bimbo’, she unpacks the labels that box women in, and the systems that keep them there. From ‘bossy’ little girls, ‘tarty’ teens, to mothers who ‘let themselves go’, and ‘left-on-the-shelf’ single women, Ashley dissects the systems that try to confine us and asks: what if we broke free? Told through raw personal stories, humour and with a fierce feminist lens, this is a battle cry for every woman who’s ever felt too much – or not enough. This is a call to women stop shrinking, stop competing, and start rising – together.

  • Making the Cut

    £18.99

    When Max meets Eliana, a dazzling modern Orthodox Jewish girl, in a bar in Edinburgh one night, he never expected it kickstart an agonising identity crisis. While their connection is instant and deep, Max discovers a devastating truth: that to millions around the world, including the girl he’s fallen for, he is deemed non-Jewish. Determined to build a future with her, comedian and writer (and uncircumcised liberal Jew) Max Olesker embarks on the world’s most demanding religious conversion process. He attempts to navigate the dizzying complexities of Jewish law, the challenges of maintaining a relationship without physical contact, and the looming prospect of a date with a scalpel. From moving into the home of an Orthodox family for eight months to enduring gruelling interrogations by a high court of Rabbis, Max’s journey is a rollercoaster of humour, heartbreak, and self-discovery.

  • Leaving Home

    £25.00

    Mark Haddon’s parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least Mark had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham. Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. And it’s richly illustrated throughout with images from the author’s childhood. As bracing as it is embracing, ‘Leaving Home’ is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.

  • The North Pole

    £11.99

    The epic adventure story of humanity’s obsession with the North Pole, from Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge who travelled there in 1990. ‘The North Pole’ is an adventure story, a book about enacting hidden human dreams, about difficult fathers and their difficult sons, and a psychological record of what it means to keep putting one foot in front of the other in the face of adversity. It is for anyone who’s gazed out at the horizon – and wondered what happens if you just keep walking.

  • Happy on Her Own at 102

    £12.99

    We live in an age where bad news is ever present, and it can often feel like a struggle just to get through the day. Between work, bills, relationship issues, and health scares, it’s no wonder that people are craving a new perspective, a way to approach life that focuses on the positive, while also finding strength in dealing with the negative. Tetsuyo has certainly seen her fair share of ups and downs, but through it all she’s developed a distinct outlook on life, which she now shares here.