At home with the Wagners

Lucasta Miller on Brigitte Hamann's meticulous biography of Winifred Wagner, the orphan from Hastings who became friends with Hitler.

Put a sock in it, Roy

Roy Strong's Passions Past and Present will alienate anyone not fascinated by the workings of the establishment, says Rebecca Seal.

I saw a pelican crossing

In To See Every Bird on Earth, Dan Koeppel delicately captures the story of his father and ornithologists in general, says Kim Bunce.

How to talk to drunks

Simon Blackburn's Truth is an elegant introduction to this most elusive abstraction, says Zoe L Green.

When mirrorballs ruled

Disco is dead? Not in Turn the Beat Around, Peter Shapiro's exhilarating and informative rehabilitation of the dancing dinosaur, says Molloy Woodcraft.

A tsar’s star is born

Hugh Barnes's Gannibal tells the extraordinary tale of how a kidnapped slave became indispensable to Peter the Great, writes Peter Conrad.

Ancestral voices

In My Fathers' Daughter and Black Gold of the Sun, Hannah Pool and Ekow Eshun explore their British identities and African roots, writes Akin Ojumu.

A geek is born

Part pop culture examination, part biography, Jonathan Lethem's The Disappointment Artist is the chronicle of the ultimate nerd, says Sean O'Hagan.

An angry old man

Noble Laureate Elias Canetti's memoirs, Party in the Blitz, are irrepresibly bitchy, says Tim Adams, especially when it comes to TS Eliot.

What’s up, Doc?

Sophie Petit-Zeman urges a return to humanity in the NHS with her clever, unconventional Doctor What's Wrong?, says Kate Kellaway.

Our lady of sorrows

Elaine Feinstein tells how poet Anna Akhmatova, whose son was in the Gulag, spoke for millions of Russians of their hell under Stalin in Anna of All The Russians.