Biography: arts & entertainment

In this personal journey through a unique and remarkable performing art, David Copperfield profiles some of the world's most groundbreaking magicians. From the 16th-century magistrate who wrote the first book on conjuring to the roaring twenties and the man who fooled Houdini, to the woman who le...

David Hockney is the most famous living British artist. And he is arguably one of the more famous American artists as well. Emerging from the north of England in the 1960s, he made quite a splash in Swinging London as a portaitist, and went on to make a even bigger splash in Los Angeles when he m...

Celebrity, with its neon glow and selfie pout, strikes us as hypermodern. But the famous and infamous have been thrilling and outraging us for much longer than we might realise. Whether it was the scandalous Lord Byron, whose poetry sent female fans into an erotic frenzy; or the cheetah-owning, c...

Michael Palin has kept a diary since he got married in the late 1960s, when he was beginning to make a name for himself as a TV scriptwriter. But Monty Python was just around the corner. In this volume of his diaries he tells for the first time how Python emerged and triumphed. Michael Palin has ...

The essential gift for lovers of Prince, Dickens and everyone in between!In Nick Hornby's completely joyous and original new book two great figures share the stage. Charles Dickens and Prince. Two wildly different artists who caught fire and lit up the world in ways no others could. Where did the...

How a DJ's innovative chopped and screwed technique changed the Houston hip-hop scene. DJ Screw, a.k.a. Robert Earl Davis Jr., changed rap and hip-hop forever. In the 1990s, in a spare room of his Houston home, he developed a revolutionary mixing technique known as chopped and screwed. Spinning t...

I'm always asked questions - by fans, by other actors and friends, by my grandchildren. They want to know how I've lasted so long, how I handle fame, why I chose to do some of my films, which films and actors I like best and so forth. They also want to know what makes me tick, what makes me get u...

A definitive biography of one contemporary culture's most iconic and mysterious figures - musical revolutionary, Nobel Prize-winner, chart-topping recording artist, Bob Dylan.

A variously tragic tale of escapism and assimilation, Richard Bradford's 'The Durrells' explores the truth behind the image. The Durrells are probably the most celebrated literary family of the 20th century. Gerald turned them into celebrities with his tripartite memoir, beginning with 'My Family...

The untold story of Audrey Hepburn under fire in World War II.