I don’t know why but I have come across a feature from an old New Zealand Listener from the end of 1999 which lists and comments on the 10 best autobiographies of the millennium. In the writer’s (presumably one of their book reviewers) opinion.
With the comments shortened here they are:
 
 
1. Memoirs ~ Hector Berlioz. Wildly modern in its self-mocking, self-mythologising tone. Thrill to the great composer’s love for the doomed Harriet Smithson and the talentless Marie Recio. [How horrid to be known to posterity as ‘talentless’.] Sigh at his chronic paranoia about his career, Goggle at his bungled murder/suicide mission and at his attempt - in his lonely 60s - to find the Girl with Pink Shoes with shome he once danced when he was 12.
 
2. My Past and Thoughts ~ Alexander Herzen. Brilliant record of ferment and intrigue within 19th century Russia and his later exile across Europe. Impulsive dear diary detail. Includes a harrowing account of his wife's infidelity.

3. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon: A fascinating etiquette manual/diary by a courtesan in medieval Japan, full of insights into love, politics and human foibles.
 
4. Historia Calamitatum ~ Peter Abelard. Among the first and purest examples of autobiography as personal promotion. Abelard inflates his own brilliance and relates his affair with Heloise with flair and supreme self-absorption.
 
5. An Unfinished Woman ~ Lillian Hellman. A superb example of the "her life/her loves" genre as she keeps life, career and dignity afloat among the US politerati of the 30s and 40s.
 
6. Mukiwa: A white Boy in Africa ~ Peter Godwin. A witty, perceptive and moving account of Godwin’s childhood during the last days of colonial rule in Rhodesia.
 
7. Down the Fairway ~ Robert Trent Jones. Fascinating account of golf as played at the turn of the (last) century by one of the game’s greatest players and course designers.
 
8. Behind the Oval Office ~ Dick Morris. The 1999 revised edition has the real snake oil about the Clinton years, written by the master of political morality as mere (poll-tested) brand projection.
 
9. Beyond a Boundary ~ C L R James. The great Caribbean socialist meditate on his roots in cricket, and how the game shaped him and the whole colonial history of the region.
 
10. Lost in Music ~ Giles Smith. Amiable account of one man’s co-dependence on pop music...Ponder these foibles as he vainly attempts to become the next Sting.
 
Have you read any of these? Have any comments? What would you add or detract? I don't think I have read any of them, though presumably parts of Abelard's in other books. I should look out for the James' cricket one.

Never read any of them,Caro. However this does prompt me to visit the library and get David Niven's two books,The Moon's a Balloon and Bring on the Empty Horses, both of which I've yet to read and are  meant to be very good.

They are indeed!

Excellent!!!!

I don't know if diaries count as autobiographies, but I've got two lots on the go at the moment: Richard Burton's and those of Kenneth Williams. I'm afraid King Alfred can't compete and has been abandoned.

Such bleak lives, despite the applause and the fame, and -  in Burton's case - the women.

Burton's diaries are beautifully written; he should have been a writer/scholar. His tragedy is perhaps that he knew that.

Kenneth Williams' comic genius always made me feel so happy, yet the final words he wrote were: "...oh - what's the bloody point?"

"I am beginning to get famous now, which is about bloody time. However, I still hate everyone and everything, and am constantly racked with pain throughout my body, and a cancerous malevolence in my heart. I wish I had someone who would help me. Some people have offered to help me, but they were so diabolically repulsive that I threw a Toby Jug at them".

nordmann wrote:

They are indeed!

You're right, Nordmann, The Moons a Balloon was an excellent read. Unfortunately, the City Library doesn't appear to have a copy of Bring on the Empty Horses, or if they do, it has been on loan when I've been there. Being arranged alphabetically, just a short distance from where Niven's book is located, there is this one;



Now, having had a crush on Ms MacLaine since Irma la Douce, I had to read this. It is............... very candid. I won't spoilt it for anyone who might want to read it. Shirley herself has said it is fiction, though at one point she does save Sachi from a nasty relationship. Best read it for yourself, and draw your own conclusions.