What is the best Autobiography that you have read and why?

[biglips]

as ive never had read one till i read Bob Marley - Died too young (summat like that) mini book and i was so absorbed into it.. i would like to try out another again

I've never read one either....

thats really bad grammer isn't it?

I'm sure it should be "i haven't read one either" or just "I've never read one"

I enjoyed frank Skinner's and Clive James' Unreliable memoirs is fab.

I think that's a biography biglips - autobiographies are by the actual person, biographies are written by somebody else.

I love both though. one of my favourites has to be 'The Mitford Girls' by Mary S Lovell, also I love any biogs about Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, other film stars.

I just reread all the UNreliable Memoirs books - they were fab!

sorry i am talking about both

MrsJohnCusack - yes i am looking into the old film stars books (Autobiography ones)

something like 'hollywood babylon' is good with lots of juicy gossip

I love all the ones about old Hollywood stars - all the old fashioned glamour, and they led pretty fantastic and racy lives.

autobiographies- have really enjoyed John Simpson's ones & also funnily enough the 'lighter' ones e.g. by June Whitfield, Richard Whiteley etc. Plus I've fairly recently read ones by Anne Robinson, Janet Street-Porter and John McEnroe. And I love the crappy ones like Victoria Beckham's and Geri Halliwell's, whether they actually wrote them or not - don't care, I'm just terminally nosy and love reading about other people's lives!

Gorky: My Childhood, My Apprenticeship, My Universities (it's a trilogy). They read more like novels, and give you a glimpse into a world totally alien to what we know nowadays.

margeret forster has written some great biographies

im looking at Cilla Black "Whats it all about" and Paula Yates one atm on Ebay

I have read Jordsn's, Ulrika Johnsons's, Geri Haliwell's and VB's (Gawd, what does that say about me? and Road Dahl's and Annabelle Goldsmith.

I am currently reading Sharon Osbourne's.

Is it only an autobiography if it covers the person's whole life? (feeling rather embarrassed to not know this but still)

Because the best book about a person's life I have ever read is An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan but it only covers the period when he was in Beirut. It's an absolutely blinding book and unbelievable inspiring, given the subject matter.

I think the best straightforward biography I have read is probably the Oscar Wilde one with the green cover (can't remember who wrote it . For stories about their lives I love Alan Bennett and John Irving. What are these books called that are not strictly auto-biographies? Memoirs? You couldn't call An Evil Cradling a memoir, though, that sounds far too trivial and light...

OOh Franny you sound so intelliegnt and I sound soo trashy.....

Oh no hold on the absolute best one (apart from Brian Keenan) is Prick Up Your Ears, Joe Orton's biography written by John Lahr. It is absolutely hilarious, shocking, gossipy, and moving by turns

I couldn't possibly comment on why that might be, Northerner

I must be thick,who is joe orton ?

He was a gay playwright in the 1960s. He wrote "What the Butler Saw" and "Entertaining Mr Sloane" before being murdered by his lover. His life was....erm....colourful

that joe orton book is hilarious! i especially like the letters written at the back, sad ending though

Primo Levi's If This is a Man/The Truce is my fav

The Edna Welthorpe letters are the business aren't they SEA? Did you read the Diaries as well? I was so shocked at all his cottaging and all the boys in Tangiers

and Kenneth Williams

i read it a while ago and it certainly opened my eyes! i quite liked the film too. wasn't he complaining about fray bentos pies in one letter, i must read it again!

Are You Somebody?: Memoirs of a Dublin Woman by Nuala O'Faolain