News Blog @ Wellington City Libraries

Few people have one dish named after them let alone two. Born in 1861  Helen Porter Mitchell took her stage name from the city of her birth, Melbourne.  Oscar Hammerstein stated that “nobody ever has or ever will sing like Nellie Melba” and her tours in the U.S. even led to the term “Melbamania”.   Ann Blainey’s Marvelous Melba : the extraordinary life of a great Diva outlines just how internationally famous she was.

Killing my own snakes : a memoir is an autobiographical book by Dame Ann Leslie, a reporter with over 40 years experience. Her first column in Fleet Street headlined “She’s young, she’s provocative and she’s only 22″ at a time when age and gender mattered. Whether interviewing film stars or reporting news from war zones she was always seen in full make-up and false eyelashes!

Simon Louvish the author of Chaplin : the tramp’s odyssey describes Chaplin as a figure of multiple paradoxes. Considering his rags to riches life this is not surprising. Left in an orphanage at five he became the richest man in Hollywood. This biography gives a new insight to Chaplin’s colourful life.

Read more about these fascinating people and others including Gabriel Garcia Marquez and John Grogan (author of the film Marley and me) in this month’s Recent Biography Picks.