Vernon Scannell, war hero and drunk
‘War hero’ poet revealed as wife-beating drunk and serial deserter’ screamed the headline in the Independent newspaper, referring to James Andrew Taylor's biography of the poet Vernon Scannell.
The real Jane Austen
Almost every fact that can be known about Jane Austen is known already; her life would appear to have been squeezed dry. So a new biography might seem superfluous, but Paula Byrne’s book is not quite a biography.
Two lives of John Henry Newman
When John Henry Newman died in 1890, he left instructions that he should be buried with another priest, his friend Ambrose St John, and he also made it clear that he wished his body to decay.
