Top 10 Biography Books & Autobiographies

Over the last 30 years, the ubiquity of Apple products, from the iPhone to iTunes, has made the influence that Steve Jobs has had on society, hard to ignore. Readers of this fascinating biography get to recount how Jobs took a tiny enterprise in his garage to become one of the world’s leading electronics manufacturers.

There is perhaps no story of racial inequality that has resonated around the world, quite in the way Nelson Mandela has. Arrested in 1962 and branded a terrorist for attempting to overthrow the brutal apartheid regime, Mandela would serve more than 27 years in prison as a result.

Whilst not everybody will be familiar with his name, anyone who has ever used PayPal, will know what Elon Musk became famous for. If founding this globally popular payment platform wasn’t enough, this serial entrepreneur has since gone on to create electric car company Tesla Motors, solar energy enterprise Solar City and Space X, the forward-thinking spacecraft company.

In the music industry, there are few bigger names than the Rolling Stones and Keith Richards was an integral part of the band's success. Responsible for creating many of the songs that are so familiar to us all today, Keith Richards was also known for partying just as hard as he played.

We go back to the 18th Century now for our next top biography choice, as we look at Catherine the Great, a woman who rose from relative obscurity in Germany to become one of the most powerful people on the planet. Catherine II served as Empress of Russia for a full 35 years after overthrowing her husband, Peter III in a coup d’etat to claim the throne. How’s that for girl power?

Jay Z is a one-man industry, with not only his own inimitable music style but also his lines of cologne, Reebok trainers and designer jeans. Couple that with his marriage to female music icon Beyonce and you soon realise just what a global star the boy who began life as Shawn Corey Carter has become.

Made famous by the 1962 film “The Miracle Worker”, Helen Keller’s story is one that inspires and nourishes the soul in equal measure. Overcoming the barriers of both deafness and blindness, Helen Keller’s own account of her battle to be able to communicate from ‘the dark’ offers a beacon of hope to anyone facing physical and emotional adversity.

Eric Idle was part of the comedy revolution that was Monty Python, with the actor and funnyman playing starring roles in the never to be forgotten movies The Meaning of Life, The Life of Brian and The Holy Grail. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, named after the number one hit song written by Eric Idle, takes a look at the great man’s early beginnings at a strict boarding school, right through to his hugely successful career in comedy films and TV.

When music promoter and manager Danny Goldberg took on a largely unknown band named Nirvana at the beginning of the 90s, he couldn’t have envisaged that its lead singer, Kurt Cobain would go on to become a global pop icon. The singer dealt badly with megastardom, resulting in his suicide and a mass outpouring of grief from his fans, but his name and his influence still endure.

There have been many accounts of the lives of the infamous Kray Twins, but this one comes from an altogether new source. Kate Kray, who married Ronnie Kray in his twilight years, was given a unique insight into the shadowy world they called home and was made privy to secrets that were never to be revealed until the twins were no longer with us.