Take a look at these great anticipated biographies of 2026 in celebration of National Non-Fiction November!
Non-Fiction November is an annual celebration that highlights the joy and value of factual reading for young readers and beyond.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
Swan Song: Diana, My Sister
Charles Spencer
In September 1997, Charles Spencer stood in Westminster Abbey before a watching world and shared his grief at losing his beloved sister, Diana. Now, nearly thirty years later, he tells the astonishing story of his life with Diana and the tragic week of her death.
In childhood, Charles and Diana, the youngest Spencers, were inseparable – secretly calling one another Duch and Carlos. As each other’s closest confidantes, they roamed the family estate, endured extremely challenging boarding schools, survived terrifying nannies and helped each other through the agony of their parents’ divorce. Yet everything changed when Diana married the Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, and overnight became a global icon.
Charles saw his older sister serve the world’s marginalized and relish being mother to her treasured sons. But, pursued by a barbaric press as her royal marriage crumbled, she was left desperately alone.
Is It Too Late to Make a Run For It?
Judi Dench
Judi takes us on a heartfelt and hilarious tour of her extraordinary life and career: from growing up in York and being miffed at not getting the part of Mary in the school Nativity, to walking the red carpets of Hollywood and garnering eight Oscar nominations.
Yet despite the accolades, she has been accompanied by doubt. From the movie producer who said she had ‘everything wrong’ with her face to the theatre director who advised her against doing sitcom. Is it any wonder she leaves a bag by the rehearsal room door in case she has to make a run for it? But stepping out of her comfort zone has been Judi’s guiding principle.
And here, she reveals all in this heart-to-heart conversation. She tells stories of pranks (both on stage and off), dissects her greatest screen roles, shares tales of her joyful marriage to actor Michael Williams, as well as her passion for nature and animals.
A Life in Lyrics
Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury was one of the greatest showmen of the 20th century. But behind the glamour lived a musician and lyricist talented beyond measure, and the creative force behind one of the most culturally significant and musically diverse bands the world has ever seen.
When Freddie passed away in 1991, he left to his former fiancée and dearest friend Mary Austin not only his house and possessions but also a creative archive spanning almost two decades.
From his earliest works before Queen was formed, right through to the end of his solo career, his notebooks and doodlings contain previously unpublished material including alternate lyrics and abandoned verses for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and multiple drafts of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, as well as entire songs that were never recorded.
Accompanied by stories, memories, and anecdotes from his lifelong companion, ‘A Life in Lyrics’ is a creative record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
All About My Mother
Rachael Stirling
An icon at twenty-seven and voted sexiest woman of all time forty years later, Diana Rigg was Emma Peel, the catsuited Avenger and 007’s only wife. She was equally unforgettable as Medea, Mother Courage, Mrs Danvers and Game of Thrones’ Queen of Thorns. Stephen Sondheim wrote a song for her; Ted Hughes translated a play; Laurence Olivier called her ‘Tits Rigg’.
She fearlessly fought for equal pay and took the Daily Mail to court for their campaign against her (winning both times). Always witty and direct, when asked what it meant to become a dame, she replied, ‘I think it means I’m not supposed to say f*** anymore’. Offstage, she was a gloriously naughty, deeply loving, take-no-prisoners mother to her only child, Rachael Stirling. Little surprise that Rachael became an actress – here she shows that she is a writer too.
‘All About My Mother’ is both a showstopping mother-daughter memoir and the vivid life of a legend all rolled into one.
A British Childhood
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Frank Cottrell-Boyce tells the story of what it means to be young in Britain today and the consequences of growing up at the sharp end of two major crises – the pandemic and austerity.
During his time as Children’s Laureate he visited schools that had been forced to make permanent homes in temporary buildings, where teachers doubled up as social workers, therapists and nutritionists. He talked to children abandoned within the prison system, seen to have forfeited their right to the second chance a good education might provide. He met families shuttled from one hotel room to another as they awaited the outcome of asylum decisions. And he talked to the extraordinary array of people working to change the fortunes of the young people around them.
These encounters prompted him to reflect on his own upbringing in Merseyside, the difference literature made to his early years, and how, during his lifetime, childhood in Britain has been transformed.
Down Burrow Lane
Michael Morpurgo
‘One day can change a whole life – whether you are standing by a river looking at a heron, or watching a buzzard soaring over a hillside, or learning about friendship away from home for the first time.’
Fifty years ago, Michael and Clare Morpurgo packed their young family into a car in London and set off for a remote farm in rural Devon, down a narrow track called Burrow Lane. It was on this magical farm that Michael, then a young schoolteacher, became a writer. Over the years, it would inspire many of his best-loved books, including ‘War Horse’ and ‘Private Peaceful’.
Here, Michael and Clare raised their family – and, in many ways, grew up themselves. They also welcomed more than 100,000 children from towns and cities to experience life in the countryside through their charity, Farms for City Children. This is the remarkable love story of Michael and Clare, and an account of the joys and hardships of life on the farm across five decades.
Autumn: The Story of a Season
Kate Mosse
Kate Mosse celebrates the season of shifting light and crisp mornings. This magical journey through the turning year captures the ever-changing colours of the autumn landscape, the white chalk Downs, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the drift of migrating birds and the last warmth of the sun.
Starting in her own garden, Kate leads us out to the misty Fishbourne marshes of her childhood, with their vast skies and wading birds, and into ancient yew forests steeped in myth and mystery. We travel across the harvest fields, follow the river bends of the Ouse and the Lavant, and join the crowds at Lewes on Bonfire Night, where the air crackles with flame and torchlight.
Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work
Sarah Wynn-Williams
Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former diplomat and international lawyer from New Zealand, pitched for her dream job. She saw Facebook’s potential and knew it could change the world for the better.
But, when she got there and rose to its top ranks, things turned out a little different. From wild schemes cooked up on private jets to risking prison abroad, this book exposes both the personal and political fallout when boundless power and a rotten culture take hold.
In a gripping and often absurd narrative, Wynn-Williams rubs shoulders with Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and world leaders, revealing what really goes on among the global elite – and the consequences this has for all of us.
Get Back: The Boys Who Became The Beatles
Hunter Davies
Hunter Davies, the only authorised biographer of the Beatles, revisits his treasured 39 notebooks filled with remarkable interviews to explore the lives of John, Paul, George and Ringo as they were growing up and coming of age.
Drawing on a wealth of never-before-revealed, intimate material, and his own experience as a boy of similar age from a working-class Northern background, Hunter now tells the story of where they came from, what it was like, how it shaped their hopes and aspirations.
Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China
Jung Chang
Jung Chang’s ‘Wild Swans’ was a book that defined a generation an epic personal history of Jung, her mother and grandmother – ‘three daughters of China’.
The book opens with her grandmother’s birth – and foot binding – in 1909, when China was under the last emperor, through Mao Zedong’s rule and the Cultural Revolution during which Jung’s parents were subject to unbelievable ordeals. It finishes in 1978 when the Mao era officially ended, and Deng Xiaoping started the post-Mao ‘Reforms’.
Jung, at that propitious juncture, became one of the first Chinese to leave Communist China for the West. Nearly half a century on, China has risen from a decrepit and isolated state to a world power, the challenger to the United States’ dominant position in the world.
‘Fly, Wild Swans’ is the follow-up to ‘Wild Swans’ and brings the story of Jung’s family – along with that of China – up to date.
The Great Dictator: A Life of Barbara Cartland
Matthew Sweet
Penniless virgins. Reckless dukes. Flappers. Airmen. Suffragettes. Barbara Cartland made them fall in love. She wrote 723 books without touching a typewriter: instead, she reclined on her sofa with a Pekinese on her lap – and romantic fiction billowed out of her.
This biography reveals the woman behind the powder and mascara – a clever, socially precarious writer navigating a twentieth-century world of war-damaged men, class conflict and sexual peril. After 49 proposals, she chose the wrong one. What followed was a life stranger than any of her novels.
From country house weekends to Fleet Street offices, from Mayfair bedrooms to the divorce court, Matthew Sweet traces Cartland’s extraordinary journey through a century of upheaval. Here are terrorist plots, psychic seances, suppressed scandals, plagiarism battles in the cutthroat world of romance publishing – and a surprising turn as a campaigner for Romany rights.
Great and Unfortunate Things
Jason Arday
When Jason Arday was thirty-seven years old, everything changed. He made international news by becoming the youngest Black professor in the almost thousand-year history of the University of Cambridge. But that remarkable achievement is only part of his great and unfortunate tale.
He grew up in a council house in south London with his parents and two brothers. Diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay at the age of three, he spent much of his non-verbal childhood navigating a system that struggled to understand him. Doctors and teachers believed there was ‘no one in there’. But Jason’s mother, Giff, refused to accept the limits others placed on her son.
With the faith of his family and the support of a handful of extraordinary friends and mentors, Jason slowly found his voice. He spoke his first word at eleven, learned to read at eighteen, and discovered a passion for education and helping others that would transform his life. Along the way there were improbable triumphs and heartbreaking setbacks, tears of joy and moments so painful that laughter was the only option, and more than one occasion when everything seemed poised to fall apart.
English 
Polish 
Lithuanian 
Romanian 
Portuguese 
Bengali