Writers and Their Mothers review – the legacy of maternal blessings
Made, marred, mollycoddled and inspired … Philip Larkin, Ian McEwan and Samuel Beckett are among the authors in this lively collection of affectionate and celebratory essays
Afterglow: A Dog Memoir by Eileen Myles review – for the love of dog
An elegy for a lost pet by a rock star of the spoken word takes in love, death and animal vision
MI5 and Me by Charlotte Bingham review – a coronet among the spooks
The bestselling novelist reveals the truth about her spy father in a larky tale of cold war espionage
‘Why I told my mother not to read my book’ – memoirs of a former wild girl
Claire Dederer has written what is surely one of the most excruciatingly frank memoirs ever – raw, revealing and explicit
Debussy: A Painter in Sound review – a lasting impression
Stephen Walsh’s fascinating study shows the composer progressing from ‘dainty’ sketches to extraordinary works of our time
The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale – review
In his obsessive pursuit of Saul Bellow, biographer James Atlas found his own compelling story to tell
Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing by Lara Feigel – review
What it means to be an intelligent, political woman two generations after Lessing
Unmasked: A Memoir by Andrew Lloyd Webber review – breakups, makeups and megahits
From Jesus Christ Superstar to The Phantom of the Opera, a king of the humblebrag recalls how he conquered musical theatre
Edward Pearce obituary
Political journalist, columnist and biographer who worked for the Daily Express, Daily Telegraph and the Guardian
The lost, wild world of Caresse Crosby, notorious queen of 1920s Paris society
From the outrageous parties to publishing Hemingway, a remarkable life has now been retold in a book, The Heart is a Burial Ground, by her great-granddaughter Tamara Colchester
The parent trap: can you be a good writer and a good parent?
Doris Lessing left her marriage and children to write. Seventy-five years on, Lara Feigel examines the author’s maternal ambivalence and explores her own struggle to balance motherhood and freedom
The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam review – portrait of a mother goddess
Edemariam deftly traces her grandmother’s life in Ethiopia, taking in Haile Selassie’s feudal reign and Marxist dictatorship
In brief: Stay With Me; Eat the Apple; Trajectory – review
Nigerian novelist Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s vivid debut, an inventive Iraq memoir from Matt Young and an introduction to the genius of Richard Russo
The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam review – anatomy of an unyielding spirit
The extraordinary life of the author’s grandmother, who married aged eight and survived tumultuous events, is richly and painstakingly evoked
Cancer, Clare and me: actor Greg Wise on the death of his sister
A year after the death of his beloved sister, Wise talks about caring for Clare in her last days, and the blog, now a book, they wrote together