Best autobiography you have read

[newnameagain1976]

Im going to try and read more this year. I enjoy autobiographies. Can anyone recommend a good one please?

David Attenborough 's Life On Air is very good.

Mark Lanegan's sing backwards and weep is a very good autobiography. Brutally honest. I love a auto/biography but this is the one I recommend the most.

Under a mackerel sky -Rick Stein's autobiography is worth a read OP. Interesting and thoughtfully written.

I've got a couple - Take it Like a Man by Boy George, and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeannette Winterson.

Ooh, so many recommendations! Excuse me for the long list but I don’t know many readers in real life.

Autobiographies:
Jonathan Van Ness - incredibly candid and brave.
Mathew Mccaughnahey - thoroughly bonkers, uplifting and unique
Marilyn Manson - terrifying, horrid, fascinating. Didn’t sleep for five days after reading.

Biographies:
Marie stopes - very interesting figure.
The Mitford sisters - great book but quite long.
Anton Lavey - extraordinarily entertaining life!

Memoirs:
Tracks - Robyn Davidson.
Wild - Cheryl strayed.
pretty much anything Augustin Burroughs has ever written. He is very funny.

Open - Andre Agassi. The best sports autobiography I've read.

The Heart Has Its Reasons - The Duchess of Windsor. Her own fascinating take on the abdication crisis.

Patrick Stewart ‘Making It So’ is lovely.

Another vote for David Niven, Dave Grohl ( the audio book self narrated is fabulous ), Richard E Grant and Boy George.

We have similar tastes! I've read all those except Richard E Grant. Everett is a brilliant storyteller.
David Niven's are wonderful, read those many years ago.
Music - Debbie Harry's, both of Viv Albertine's, Brix Smith's, Phil Collins was a loose end read but surprisingly good, Lemn Sissay as mentioned previously.
Politics - Alan Clarke Diaries,'This Boy' Alan Johnson, both Clintons.

Rupert Everett Red Carpets and other banana skins.
Fabulous, filthy and very human. Beautifully written.

Also Deborah Orr, Chrissie Hynde, Tracy Thorn...

The ones already recommended are great, I'll add Stephen Fry, Chrissie Hinds and Pattie Smith's.

Alan Rickman's diaries are wonderful. Gossipy, moving and tender.

Ricky Tomlinson. A real page turner right until the end

Terence Stamp's - think there are three volumes. The first and second one, the last one not so good. He was an icon in the 60s, his girlfriend was the beautiful Shrimpton, and it is very evocative of swinging London. The last one, he goes all mystical and far out man.

How could I forget Miriam Margoyles! On audio book just so you get to hear her saying the F word with superb diction. Quite the (sex) life!

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

I'd forgotten This Boy by Alan Johnson until a pp mentioned it. That was very enjoyable.

I also enjoyed Things Can Only Get Better and Things Can Only Get Worse by John O'Farrell.

Clive James - Unreliable Memoirs is the first of 3 separate books (which I have but you can get them all in one book now) - they had me in stitches... but I think you'd have to know Clive James to enjoy it - if you've never heard of him probably not much point.

Bob Mortimer's - And Away has chapters that alternate between hilarious childhood recollections and disarmingly honest and poignant stories from the more recent past - and it's far better overall because of that switching back and forth - better than I expect it to be.

I think biography is such a hard area to make recommendations - I have read quite a lot of biography but few (I think) by people that most people will know of so I'd hesitate to recommend any to anyone - it depends on what sort of personal story or context you are drawn to -

I liked John Hull's Notes on Blindness (made into a beautiful award winning film) and Eavesdropping - A Life By Ear by Stephen Kuusisto - another one on blindness.

A Mountain of Crumbs: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain - Elena Gorokhova

I don't really enjoy autobiographies generally but read frank skinners on a recommendation from a friend and it was laugh out loud funny. I remember chortling away to myself on the tube

If you can find a copy, Castles Burning: a child's life in war by Magda Denes.

She was a psychoanalyst specialising in child psychology after the war, and I think the special thing about this book for me is that she seems to capture herself as she was at the time without hindsight affecting her voice at all.

Strong female character by Fern Brady. Amazing clever, funny, traumatic writing about her undiagnosed autism. Will stay with me for a long time.

A bit left field but one that's always stuck with me is 'Breaking the Surface' by Greg Louganis the US diver. Not only about his Olympic diving career but about being diagnosed as HIV+ and coming out as a gay athlete.

I want to get my hands on Naya Rivera's autobiography that poor girl from Glee who drowned a few years back.

Years ago, read biographies Judy Garland & Enid Blyton - both fascinating!

I enjoyed Jonny Bairstow's autobiography.