BIOGRAPHY HIGHLIGHTS 2008

Tim Martin writing in The Telegraph selects the year's highlights in life-writing and memoir

Any discussion of the year's biographies has to begin with Patrick French's near-impossibly frank biography of VS Naipaul, The World Is What It Is (Picador, £20). French was permitted a degree of access to his subject enjoyed by few other biographers, and both he and Naipaul are so forthcoming about the latter's persistently ghastly behaviour that the reader begins to suspect some imposture: surely soon the men in white coats will arrive for Sir Vidia and the lawyers will snatch the book from one's hands? But no.

Here is Naipaul plain: unabashed racist, scourge of domestic harmony, abusive lover, embittered cynic. It's easy to forget, amid the torrent of revelation, how wonderful his prose actually is.

Tim Martin's full list at The Telegraph online.