Alexander Larman LAZARUS with Philip Clark

Lazarus : The Second Coming of David Bowie

When David Bowie died on 10 January 2016, aged 69, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before.

Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up. His Eighties career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock with the had been disastrous, and the art-rock music with which he had made his name was badly out of fashion. The Thin White Duke needed a miracle if he was not only going to be able to assume his rightful place at the top of the rock music firmament, but even to continue his career. And a miracle - a resurrection from the dead - is precisely what happened.

Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first biography of Bowie that tells the full and candid story of what happened in between those two apparently unbridgeable points. With new and exclusive interviews with the musicians, filmmakers and cultural figures who worked with and befriended Bowie throughout this period, Lazarus is the definitive account of the previously overlooked and fascinating latter half of a great and distinguished career. A career that climaxed with his final masterpiece, Blackstar, and the unprecedented theatrical flourish of his departure from the stage as he passed into legend.

Alexander Larman

Alexander Larman is the author of several historical and biographical titles. His most recent book, Power and Glory, the third and final instalment in his Windsors trilogy, following The Crown in Crisis and The Windsors at War, was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in March 2024. His first book, Blazing Star: The Life and Times of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was published by Head of Zeus in 2014, and his second, Restoration, a social history of the year 1666, was published in April 2016. His third, Byron’s Women, came out in September 2016 and was shortlisted for the Elma Dangerfield Prize.

He is books editor of The Spectator’s world edition and is a contributing editor to The Critic magazine. He has a monthly book review column in The Observer and writes regularly about literature and the arts for publications including Prospect, The Times, Engelsberg Ideas and the Daily Telegraph.

Philip Clark

Philip Clark is a music journalist who has written about classical music, modern composition, jazz, free improvisation and rock music for many leading publications including The Wire, Gramophone, Classic FM Magazine, MOJO, Jazzwise, The Guardian, Financial Times, London Review of Books, Prospect and New York Review of Books.

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