Recommend me fastastic (auto)biographies

[BoogleMcGroogle]

Having spent the past week engrossed by Lindsey Hilsum's superb biography of the equally superb Marie Colvin, I've realised I need to read more books about fascinating people.

Please recommend me your favourites. I'm not that into 'slebs, but would love anything that portrays an interesting life fully lived.

Many years ago I enjoyed Vera (mrs Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff.
More recently I read a great bio of Arthur Ransome.
Captain Scott by Ranulph Fiennes.
Also Cold Cream by the inimitable and sylish Ferdinand Mount.

Not autobiographies but two memoirs I’ve recently loved are Michelle Obama’s Becoming and The World I Fell Out Of.

Funnily enough I just recommended I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell. One of my very favourite books.

Thanks so much everyone for these recommendations. I'm really keen to read outside my normal comfort zone, so I promise I'm going to look every single one up on Amazon

I don’t usually read autobiographies but I have just enjoyed “Everyone Died so I Got a Dog” by Emily Dean.

"Let IT Go" by Dame "Steve" Shirley.

She arrived in the UK in 1939, age 5 on the Kindertransport with her sister. She went into computing as a young woman, realised that she would never be promoted, quit and started her own company (her husband suggested she'd get more contracts if she signed as "Steve Shirley" rather than "Stephanie") and hired women programmers who'd left/been pushed out when they had kids, all working from home. Built it into a multi-million pound business. Her son was severely autistic and she set up a charitable trust fund focusing on autism related projects.

Utterly remarkable woman!

Jonathan Coe's biography of the novelist BS Johnson, Like A Fiery Elephant, is brilliant. I hadn't even heard of BS Johnson, but that doesn't make any difference.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali..her amazing autobiography. From Somalian refugee to Dutch mp to seeking refuge, from danger in Holland, in America.

I've just finished Christopher Reeves "Still Me" and while it's not always riveting like a good novel, it is very compelling (and hearrbreaking). And inspiring.