Great Britain, biography book series in reading order

by James Herriot

Who HQ is the credit on 429 children's nonfiction biographies in the catalogue, published from 2002 to 2026. The run opens with Who Was Albert Einstein?, Who Was Amelia Earhart? and Who Was Ben Franklin? (all 2002) and reaches Who Is Vera Wang (2026). Subjects include biography, history and juvenile nonfiction for readers aged 8 to 12. Other names credited on some of the books include Megan Stine (7), John Hinderliter (7) and Nico Medina (4).

James Herriot wrote about veterinary practice in the English countryside, mixing memoir, anecdote and animal stories. The catalogue holds 39 titles published between 1970 and 2023, among them All Creatures Great and Small (1972), All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974) and the 2023 collection The Wonderful World of James Herriot. All Creatures Great and Small is the best known sequence, and Herriot also wrote children's books such as Bonny's Big Day. The books are short at a median of 180 pages, and the catalogue is closed.

Cathy Glass writes accounts of fostering. Damaged and Hidden both appeared in 2007, and 54 titles are catalogued through Helpless: Part 3 (2024). Foster children, foster mothers, abused children and therapeutic foster care fill the subject tags, with the books filed under biography and British social conditions. Non-fiction, novels and short works all sit on the list.

Foster care accounts for the whole of Casey Watson's catalogue: 31 books published between 2011 and 2023, drawn from therapeutic fostering in Great Britain. The run opens with The Boy No One Loved (2011) and ends with I Want My Daddy (2023). Subject headings cover foster children, abused children, foster mothers and biography. Short stories and novellas sit alongside the full-length titles. Nothing new has appeared since 2023, and the catalogue is dormant.

Alison Weir is a British historian and author who writes about English royalty, and about royal women in particular. Weir's first book, Britain's Royal Families (1989), set out a genealogy of the British royal family; biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Katherine Swynford and Elizabeth of York followed, alongside studies of Henry VIII and his court and of the Princes in the Tower. Weir writes historical fiction as well, including the Six Tudor Queens and Tudor Rose novels. The catalogue holds 59 titles between 1989 and 2026, the most recent being The Boleyn Secret.

Gordon Ramsay

27 books• 1 series

Gordon Ramsay, born 8 November 1966, is a British chef, restaurateur, television presenter and writer. Gordon Ramsay Restaurants, founded in 1997, has earned 17 Michelin stars in total and holds eight. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, London, has kept three stars since 2001 and is run by chef Matt Abé. Ramsay first became famous through the 1999 British miniseries Boiling Point. The catalogue lists 27 books from 2000 to 2023, starting with Passion for Flavour, A Chef for All Seasons and Passion for Seafood (2000). Humble Pie (2006) and Playing with Fire (2007) are listed, and Gordon Ramsay's Uncharted (2023) is the newest. Quick and easy cooking and British cookery appear in the subject tags.

Tracy Borman is an English historian who writes royal history alongside historical fiction. Elizabeth's Women (2009), a group portrait of the women around Elizabeth I, is her best known book, and Thomas Cromwell (2014), The Private Lives of the Tudors (2016) and Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him (2018) follow. The Frances Gorges trilogy, opening with The King's Witch (2018), is her fiction. Borman became Chancellor of Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln in July 2022, and her catalogue runs to 16 titles, reaching The House of Boleyn (2026).

Antonia Fraser

40 books• 3 series

Antonia Fraser, born Antonia Pakenham on 27 August 1932, is a British writer of history, biography, novels and detective fiction. Fraser is the widow of Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel laureate in literature, and was known as Lady Antonia Pinter until his death in 2008. The catalogue runs to 40 books between 1954 and 2023, setting biographies and histories such as Mary Queen of Scots (1969), Cromwell (1973) and The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England (1975) beside the Jemima Shore detective novels. Subjects record kings and rulers, queens, England and women detectives.

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England, and a winner of the Booker Prize. The Times placed Fitzgerald among the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 in 2008, and in 2012 The Observer listed her final novel, The Blue Flower, among the ten best historical novels. A.S. Byatt called her Jane Austen's nearest heir for precision and invention. Sixteen books are catalogued between 1975 and 2008, opening with Edward Burne-Jones (1975) and taking in The Bookshop (1978), Offshore (1979), Human Voices (1980), At Freddie's (1982) and The Beginning of Spring (1988).