Biography
Winner:
- John Guy, My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots
Shortlist:
- John Guy, My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots
- David McKie, Jabez - The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Rogue
- John Sutherland, Stephen Spender
- Jeremy Treglown, V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life
Read more about this topic: 2004 Whitbread Awards
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)