Norman Mailer stabbed his wife, Orwell 扱う／治療するd his as a lackey and John le Carr? was spectacularly unfaithful. Ysenda Maxtone Graham reviews the best biographies of writers in 2023... Why literary lions make terrible husbands

• e-mail

The Secret Life of John Le Carre

by Adam Sisman (Profile £16.99, 208 pp)

When Adam Sisman approached David Cornwell, aka John Le Carr?, as his possible 伝記作家 in 2010, Le Carr? 特記する／引用するd 'my messy 私的な life' as one of the things that made him 極端に nervous about the idea. But he said yes, and Sisman's biography duly （機の）カム out in 2015, when Le Carr? and his second wife Jane were still alive.

The Secret Life of John Le Carre by Adam Sisman (Profile £16.99, 208 pp)

On Le Carr?'s 主張, and to Sisman's 失望／欲求不満, it was a sanitised account which left most of the 'messy 私的な life' out. Le Carr?'s son 示唆するd to Sisman that he should keep a 'secret 別館' for 出版（物） after David and Jane were dead.

Now they are both dead, and this 調書をとる／予約する is that 'secret 別館': the seamy, steamy 補足（する） to the biography, recounting the string of extra-結婚の／夫婦の 事件／事情／状勢s Le Carr? 行為／行うd all through both marriages.

He was a serial philanderer, having at least 11 熱烈な 事件／事情／状勢s in the first 30 years of marriage, and probably plenty more besides. 'I'm a liar,' he once 認める. 'Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an 産業 that lies for a living [he worked for MI5 and MI6], practised in it as a 小説家.' He 栄えるd on the subterfuge. Women said he was 'running' them like スパイ／執行官s.

Sisman 示唆するs that 'far from 存在 a distraction, his 内密の 事件／事情／状勢s became perhaps 必須の to his 令状ing'. A new lover gave him the energy and frenzy to 令状 his novels, and he was far too selfish to worry about how he was messing up the women's lives.

When Adam Sisman approached David Cornwell, aka John Le Carr? (pictured), as his possible 伝記作家 in 2010, Le Carr? 特記する／引用するd 'my messy 私的な life' as one of the things that made him 極端に nervous about the idea

On Le Carr?'s 主張, and to Sisman's 失望／欲求不満, it was a sanitised account which left most of the 'messy 私的な life' out

堅い Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer

by Richard Bradford (Bloomsbury Caravel £20, 304 pp)

離婚d, stabbed, 離婚d, 離婚d, 離婚d, 生き残るd. Those are the Six Wives of the American author Norman Mailer, who comes across in Richard Bradford's biography as a loathsome, egotistical, macho, アル中患者, and terrifyingly violent serial fornicator.

The 'stabbed' one was Adele 意気込み／士気s, to whom he once wrote the compliment that compared to her 'there's not a decent piece of ass' to be 設立する.

He was drinking a 瓶／封じ込める of bourbon per night, if not two, when he and Adele lived in Manhattan in the late 1950s, and where he once （警官の）巡回区域，受持ち区域 up a passing sailor who'd 述べるd his dog as 'queer'.

堅い Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer by Richard Bradford (Bloomsbury Caravel £20, 304 pp)

While （選挙などの）運動をするing to be New York 市長 in 1960, he held a party at home and stabbed Adele twice in the kitchen, 辛うじて 行方不明の her heart. He pleaded 有罪の, and got off with a 一時停止するd 宣告，判決. Adele didn't 圧力（をかける） 告発（する），告訴（する）／料金s. Astonishingly, she said that 存在 stabbed was a reasonable price to 支払う／賃金 for 存在 married to a genius.

But was Mailer a genius? Bradford doesn't let him o ff lightly. His World War II novel The Naked and the Dead was excellent, and made him 極端に rich, but from then on he wrote a stream of inferior 調書をとる／予約するs.

His 怪しげな sixth wife Barbara Norris, 26 years his junior, 始める，決める a 私立探偵 on him, who discovered that he was still philandering away in his 70s.

Orwell: The New Life

by D. J. Taylor (Constable £30, 608 pp)

D. J. Taylor was already the 定評のある 専門家 on George Orwell, thanks to his award-winning 2003 biography.

Since then, he has 明らかにするd lost letters written by Orwell and his first wife Eileen, hinting at 以前 unknown interludes, such as Orwell's possible extra-結婚の／夫婦の love 事件／事情／状勢s with his old 炎上 Brenda Salkeld, of whom he continued to 令状 passionately long after his marriage, and with the 小説家 Inez Holden.

Hence this updated 'new life' of the chain-smoking, bronchitis-苦しむing Old Etonian genius with sickly-甘い breath, who never shook off his public-school snobbery, にもかかわらず immersing himself in the low life of Paris and Wigan.

This is a 小旅行する de 軍隊 of 文書の 証拠 連合させるd with unforgettably evocative atmosphere. Taylor is brilliant at 述べるing the 氷点の, damp world of the Orwells' cottages, first in Hertfordshire and then on Jura in the Inner Hebrides, where Orwell bashed out Nineteen Eighty-Four on a typewriter in bed, a few months before he died.

The Marriage Question: George Eliot's 二塁打 Life

by Clare Carlisle (Allen 小道／航路 £25, 400 pp)

When Marian Evans slipped out of her house in Kensington at 夜明け in 1854 and boarded a ship for the Continent with the love of her life, George Lewes, she knew she was abandoning all propriety and 危険ing 存在 a social outcast. Lewes was still married to his estranged wife.

From that moment on, she brazenly referred to Lewes as 'my husband'. On their return to London, the couple were shunned by polite society. Blissfully 'living in sin', they seemed not to mind one bit. But did Marian care more than she let on?

In this illuminating, empathetic biography, Clare Carlisle tells how she became a workaholic, 決定するd to 回復する her 評判 through her novels, under the pseudonym George Eliot.

And she did. Her worshipping 訪問者s would 含む Charles Dickens, Henry James, Wagner, Longfellow and Turgenev. Even prudish Queen Victoria became an avowed （麻薬）常用者.

Carlisle paints a memorable portrait of a remarkably 'modern' couple cohabiting as 知識人 equals. Behind the scenes, the 関係 was decidedly Victorian. There was no question of Eliot keeping 持つ／拘留する of her 収入s. They went straight into Lewes's bank account, and he became （麻薬）常用者d to her money, which he needed to support his wife who was ひどく in 負債.

From this eccentric 国内の 状況／情勢, some of the greatest novels in the English language were brought to birth.

Masquerade: The Lives of Noel Coward

by Oliver Soden (W&N £30, 656 pp)< /p>

A 'puritan hedonist', a man of 'serious frivolity', a 'louche disciplinarian', who 連合させるd 'gaiety and mournfulness, sentimentality and cynicism…' such are the paradoxes of the ever-elusive 人物／姿／数字 of Noel Coward, whose life and character are superbly 伝えるd by Oliver Soden in his sparkling and astute new biography.

Cosseted by his mother, 傾向がある to tantrums and pilfering, fastidious young Noel loathed school and hated the 不快 of his （一定の）期間 in the Army during World War I, when he managed to be in hospital so much he was never even 近づく the 前線.

'What do you want to be?' his friends asked in 1918. 'A success!' he replied. And he was: adulated as a 脚本家 on both 味方するs of the 大西洋 by the age of 24. The whole world was (to 引用する a Coward song), 'mad about the boy'.

Masquerade: The Lives of Noel Coward by Oliver Soden (W&N £30, 656 pp)

To redeem the 犯罪 of World War I 回避, he made it his 商売／仕事 to do his bit for Britain in World War II, working for 知能, travelling the globe entertaining 軍隊／機動隊s, and co-directing the 愛国的な film In Which We Serve.

Soden's gimmick of beginning his 一時期／支部s with pastiches in italics of the 開始 行為／法令／行動するs in Coward plays ('London. A warm evening in the second week of June 1925…') 作品 井戸／弁護士席, and helps this 高度に readable 調書をとる／予約する 動揺させる along.

Soden also gives us the most 満足させるing 評価 of the film 簡潔な／要約する 遭遇（する） (based on Coward's play Still Life) I've ever read. It was Coward himself who 主張するd on the Rachmaninoff 得点する／非難する／２０ as the soundtrack. 奮起させるd.

Shakespeare: The Man who 支払う／賃金s the Rent

by Judi Dench with Brendan O'Hea (Michael Joseph £25, 400 pp)

'Those lines that Shakespeare wrote,' says Judi Dench in this wonderfully 奮起させるing collection of conversations with her, 'they have to be good for your brain, don't they? I don't even have to be on 行う／開催する／段階 説 them ― just whispering them 静かに to myself can give me an endorphin 急ぐ.'

For any of us who watched Dench recite a Shakespeare sonnet off the cuff on the Graham Norton show in October, so beautifully and flawlessly that it brought the whole country out in goosepimples, this 調書をとる／予約する is the perfect follow-on.

It consists of a 一連の 記録，記録的な／記録するd 雑談（する）s between Judi Dench and her friend, the actor and theatre director Brendan O'Hea.

Shakespeare: The Man who 支払う／賃金s the Rent by Judi Dench with Brendan O'Hea (Michael Joseph £25, 400 pp)

Dench, who has lived and breathed Shakespeare ever since her first visit to the Old Vic as a child, 会談 いっそう少なく about herself than about what's going on inside the hearts and minds of Viola, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Gertrude, and all the other 役割s she's played over the years, all of which continue to fascinate her.

She's marvellously 負かす／撃墜する to earth. 'You adore the play [Macbeth], don't you?' O'Hea asks. 'Love it,' she replies. 'Beautifully 建設するd, terrific story, 広大な／多数の／重要な part, short, no interval, pub. Heaven.'

This is a riveting refresher course in the sublimity of Shakespeare's language and his 深遠な understanding of humanity, 同様に as a delightful （一定の）期間 in the company of one of our greatest and most thoughtful actresses.

Capote's Women

by Laurence Leamer (Hodder £25, 368 pp)

They were known as Truman Capote's 'Swans': the group of tall, thin, elegant, beautiful, 極端に rich women with whom the bestselling author of In 冷淡な 血 loved to hang out.

In this Gatsby-esque chronicle that oozes wealth, superficiality and hidden 結婚の／夫婦の unhappine ss, Laurence Leamer evokes the world of 中央の-20th-century America in which the most beautiful women married the richest men おもに for money.

He tells the glossy but often poignant stories of the Swans: Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, わずかな／ほっそりした Keith, Pamela Harriman, C. Z. Guest, 物陰／風下 Radziwill and Marella Agnelli, all of whom loved and 信用d Capote.

Gay, cherubic, unthreatening, charming, he seemed the perfect confidant. But, all the while, he was collecting 構成要素 for his 来たるべき novel ― and the Swans, it turned out, were that 構成要素.

Little did Capote guess what the fallout would be when Esquire magazine published a preview 抽出する from the novel in 1975. It was a 露骨な／あからさまの, cruel pastiche of the Swans.

Some of them never spoke to him again. And it wasn't even very good. The novel was never published in 十分な, and Capote would die lonely and unhappy 老年の 59, an アル中患者 and 麻薬-（麻薬）常用者.

Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life

by Anna Funder (Viking £20, 464 pp)

'Patriarchy,' 令状s Anna Funder in her やめる angry meditation on the 'invisible' life of Eileen Orwell, 'is a planetary ponzi 計画／陰謀 by which the time, work and lives of women are plundered and robbed'.

Reading the six biographies of Orwell, all of them by men, Funder was amazed to discover just how little Eileen Orwell was credited with his success.

Orwell himself, when 診察するd through this prism, comes across as a selfish husband who took his wife 全く for 認めるd, 推定する／予想するing her to do all the 家事, 含むing unblocking the lavatories, in the successio n of comfortless cottages and flats in which they lived.

When they met, she'd been a lively, 確信して student at UCL doing a Masters degree in psychology, which she gave up on marriage, to become a skivvy and typist for her husband.

When he went out to fight in the Spanish Civil War, Eileen followed him there and worked at the （警察，軍隊などの）本部 of the 独立した・無所属 労働 Party in Barcelona, 危険ing just as much, if not more, danger from the Stalinist terror than Orwell.

It was thanks to her bravely going from place to place to get their パスポートs stamped that they managed to escape Spain and 避ける 逮捕（する）. Orwell glosses over all this in Homage To Catalonia.

Reading letters to her friends, we see Eileen's self-esteem 沈むing, till her shocking death on the operating （米）棚上げする／（英）提議する 老年の 39 (Orwell was abroad at the time). Funder mingles her account with 半分-fictional 再建s of 重要な moments in Eileen's life, 加える glimpses of her own marriage, so this is part-biography, part-novel, and part-polemic.

The Knowledge 調書をとる／予約する of 公式文書，認めるs & 引用するs

by Jon Connell (Connell Publishing £12.99, 132 pp)

（麻薬）常用者s of the magazine The Week, and of daily online news 公式発表 The Knowledge, both 設立するd by visionary 新聞記者／雑誌記者 Jon Connell, are familiar with their marvellous 'Wit and 知恵' quotations ― a whole section of them in The Week, and one pithy quotation per day in The Knowledge. They are unfailingly 位置／汚点／見つけ出す-on in their summing up of some small and often unpalatable truth about human nature.

In this superbly readable collection of 'wit and 知恵' quotations, Connell has collected some of his favourites. Each makes you stop and think.

They 範囲 from cheerful and 奮起させるing ('The best way to chee r yourself up is to try to 元気づける somebody else up' ― 示す Twain) 経由で waspish ('Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be 招待するd to cocktail parties' ― Oscar Wilde) to instructive about human 能力 ('Talent 始める，決めるs the 床に打ち倒す, character 始める，決めるs the 天井' ― 法案 Belichick, American football coach) to embarrassingly true ('A secret is something that is only repeated to one person at a time' ― Robert McCrum; 'We only 自白する our little faults to 説得する people that we have no large ones' ― Fran?ois de la Rochefoucauld).

Divided into 主題s such as The Secret Of Happiness, Other People, Love, Money, Politics, and 調書をとる／予約するs, and 高めるd by Maddy Fletcher's 甘い illustrations, this 調書をとる／予約する will be devoured on Christmas afternoon. And the reader will agree with Churchill (引用するd here): 'Everything looks better after lunch.'