The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies

We live in an age obsessed with self-image. Technology has made the ‘selfie’ a ubiquitous form of social currency. Renaissance means may have been very different, but celebrity artists in Medici Florence dealt with many of the issues relating to identity and authorship that we grapple with today. Maria Loh, author of Still Lives: Death, Desire, and the Portrait of the Old Master, talks to Five Books about the curated self.

An increasing diversity of voices and willingness to experiment has heralded a new golden age of autobiography, says literary critic Laurie Hertzel. Here she highlights the very best: the six memoirs recently shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Awards.

Queen Victoria was anything but Victorian and Lord Byron was more vulnerable than we think, says writer Jonathan Keates – who considers emails a poor substitute for a hand-written correspondence.

Autofiction is writing that blurs the boundaries between autobiography and fiction. The writer of Trans: A Memoir, Juliet Jacques, picks her top five examples of the genre.

In her book The Rival Queens, historian Nancy Goldstone explored the destructive relationship between Marguerite de Valois and her mother Catherine de' Medici. Here she chooses five different memoirs that best explore the emotionally complex dynamics that characterise mother-daughter relationships.

Writing in the first person doesn’t have to be inward-looking or egotistical, says the author of The Snow Geese. He tells us about his favourite autobiographical works that use the first person to look out into the world

Historian and Sinologist Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor's Professor, History at UC Irvine, says that to get a real sense of China you need to focus on individuals and their stories. Here he chooses five books that draw on the country's long tradition of biographical writing.

The first five books in the genre, as picked by a writer, journalist and actor who wrote a memoir about running a newspaper in Yemen.

The Labour MP on political diaries. A nugget from the day of the Norway debate, which brought down the Chamberlain government: ‘Sunny morning, went riding in Richmond Park. Strolled into the House for the Norway debate'