Biographies & Memoirs

Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure.... 

The extraordinary life of history's first modern lesbian who inspired the television series Gentleman Jack....

With his unforgettable medal-winning performance in the 2012 London Olympics, double world champion Tom Daley captured the heart of the nation. This year’s Games in Tokyo will be his fourth, and Tom is embarking on them with a renewed sense of perspective about what matters in life....

Star of stage and screen. Tireless supporter of charity. Runner. Political campaigner. Fashion icon. Human. There is no one quite like Eddie Izzard....

A funny and moving trip through memories, musings and the many delights on the Number 12 route, Between the Stops is also an inspiration to us all to get off our phones, look up and to talk to each other because, as Sandi says, 'Some of the greatest trips lie on our own doorstep'....

From the incomparable Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner, Unprotected is the story of a singular artist in his own words - a powerful and revealing autobiography about race, sexuality, and art....

Stephen Fry has moved into a completely new stratosphere, both as a public figure, and a private man....

In Trans Like Me, CN Lester takes listeners on a measured, thoughtful, intelligent yet approachable tour through the most important and high-profile narratives around the trans community....

Following on from his hugely successful books, Moab Is My Washpot and The Fry Chronicles, comes the third chapter in Stephen Fry's life....

Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world's biggest stars for nearly 20 years....

Alaska spills the tea on her meteoric rise from timid Pennsylvania kid to drag superstar in this intimate photographic memoir that will appeal to diehard Alaska admirers and broader drag fans alike....

A few years ago I was asked if I'd like to make a documentary on the Mekong River, travelling from the vast delta in Vietnam to the remote and snowy peaks of Tibet.... 

A parish priest in Northamptonshire; a former rock-star whose number-one hit with The Communards was the biggest-selling single of 1986....

A coming-of-age memoir about growing up queer in a strict Muslim household....

When I began writing this book, I went home to see if my mum had kept some of my stuff. What I found was that she hadn't kept some of it. She had kept all of it....

A decade in the making, based upon hundreds of interviews and extensive new material, Pulitzer Prize winners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have written a startlingly original portrait - rich, complex, and subtle - of a commanding modern figure....

The Crab of Hate is the personification of Calman's depression and her version of the notorious Black Dog....

An inspiring and intimate self-portrait of the champion of equality that encompasses her brilliant tennis career, unwavering activism and an ongoing commitment to fairness and social justice....

This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey...

Queer Intentions provides the ultimate exploration of the joys and pains of being LGBTQ+ in the West at a time when queer culture has never been so mainstream....

Alone reveals the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating invariably moved audiences to tears....

You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants...

Jeremy Ivester is a transgender man. Thirty years ago, his parents welcomed him into the world as what they thought was their daughter. As a child, he preferred the toys and games our society views as masculine. He kept his hair short and wore boys’ clothing. They called him a tomboy....

How can we create a better world for LGBTQ+ people? Thirty-five extraordinary voices share their stories and visions for the future....

At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it.... 

Over the course of his 35-year career in show business, David Pevsner has done it all. He’s acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in independent films, and on numerous TV network shows. As he continues his career in entertainment, Pevsner has also dedicated himself to exploring his deepest sexual fantasies. In his late 30s, he became a mature male escort, and over the last several years has attracted a large international fan base through his blog of erotic photographs celebrating nudity and sexuality. Damn Shame is David Pevsner’s incredible story.

Oscar Wilde was a wild one. His statements were bold, his career was successful, and his tongue was sharp. Not only did he disturb the common narrative of the nuclear family, the Catholic church, and the idea of patriotism, but he also blew many people away with his defense of his principles, his criticism of the state, philosophies on life itself, and more. Being open about being a homosexual in a time when it was unaccepted and even illegal, his life ended in imprisonment and exile. Yet, despite his orientation and his controversial preferences, his prose and poetry did not suffer.

Tim and Rod grew up a few suburbs from each other in Newcastle, New South Wales. They were gay, but their worlds were not. Before they found each other, they were alone and miserable, marooned in a sea of impossible expectations. Rod was shackled by a conservative Christian upbringing, while Tim felt unmanly and inferior beside his macho, sport-obsessed older brothers. After enduring their own private versions of hell, Tim and Rod crossed paths on a dating app. They swiped for Mr Right, and suddenly everything clicked.

It’s easy to be yourself when who and what you are is in vogue. But growing up Black and gay in America has never been easy. Before Billy Porter was slaying red carpets and giving an iconic performance in the celebrated TV show Pose; before he was the Tony Award-winning star of Broadway’s Kinky Boots; and before he was an acclaimed recording artist, actor, playwright, and all-around diva, Porter was a young boy who didn’t fit in. 

What happens when your gender doesn't fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, 30 authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.

 Doctors gave Vishwas one year to live - every year for 20 years. Six times it looked as though death was imminent. Despite living with HIV/AIDS for 35 years, he kept living an extraordinary life by every measure. Ten years after AIDS became survivable (thanks to anti-retroviral drugs), Vishwas faced a whole new life-threatening challenge. Listen in as he shares his amazing life in intimate detail with his psychologist (and with us) in this unique memoir. 

D’yan Forest has always done things her way - or her ways, because she’s lived a dozen different lives. She’s been a desperate Boston housewife, a New York night-club singer, and a Paris swinger. She’s been the only Jewish girl in a Christian choir and the female pianist in a transvestite cabaret. She had day jobs teaching basketball, piano, and sex education. At 86, D’yan is still a working stand-up comedian and musician, but she’s much, much more than that, as this hilarious but heartfelt memoir reveals....

Greatest Hits of My Childhood Trauma is the story of a boy fighting to exist in a world that would rather throw him away. A memoir of growing up gay in '90s Middle America, this shocking tale of a failed attempt at conversion therapy will make you laugh, cry, and want to burn everything to the ground. Known as "The Filthiest Gay Rapper Alive," the debut foray into the literary world of Alex Dark (better known as MC Crumbsnatcher) is not to be missed.

The author of Blessed by the Best: A Memoir by David Kearse, a former journalist (The Baltimore Sun), now writes screenplays, one of which has been optioned by a producer, and has sustained an acting career in Hollywood. Having studied with some of the greats in theater, opera, improvisation, and creativity, he brings what he has learned explicitly to his memoir.  

Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks - posthumously discovered behind Highsmith’s linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta - traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who “[worked] like mad to be something”.

Ewan Forbes was born Elizabeth to a wealthy landowning family in 1912. As young as six, it was clear that the gender assigned to him at birth was incorrect. With the financial means of seeing specialist doctors in Europe and procuring synthetic hormones, Ewan was able to live as a boy, and then as a man, even correcting the gender on his birth certificate in order to marry. Then, in 1965, Ewan found himself in line to inherit the family baronetcy. 

Before RuPaul's Drag Race became a worldwide phenomenon, Drag was mostly an underground art form, performed by the daring and the quick-witted, with maximum energy and a minimal budget. This is the story of one of the galaxy's greatest queens, Alaska Thunderf--k 5000, as she transforms from wearing dresses made of trash bags because she has to, to wearing dresses made of trash bags because she wants to.  

In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: Massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-related complex. A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power - ACT UP - in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. 

 Mark Scarbrough has been searching for something his entire life. Whether it’s his birth mother, true love, his purpose, or his sexual identity, Mark has been on a constant quest to find out who he really is, with the great Western texts as his steadfast companions. As a boy with his head constantly in a book, desperate to discover new worlds, he can hardly distinguish between their plots and his own reality.