Coffee with... Biographies
The Coffee with... biography series is a selection of books published by Duncan Baird between 2007 and 2008 each containing fictional conversations with real famous people, conveying biographical fact. A review of Coffee with Oscar Wilde in The Independent, for example, explains that in it the author, Wilde's grandson Merlin Holland, "offers an imaginary and imaginative conversation between himself and his grandfather, set in a contemporary Parisian café". The review described that volume as "an ideal introduction to Wilde's seductive and intellectually electrifying world".
The first set of volumes published in 2007 covered eight figures: Ernest Hemingway, Gautama Buddha, Marilyn Monroe, Michelangelo, Mozart, Plato, Oscar Wilde, and Groucho Marx.
Works in the series
| Title | Published | Author | Foreword by |
| Coffee with Aristotle | 2008 | Jonathan Barnes | Julian Barnes |
| Coffee with Dickens | 2008 | Paul Schlicke | Peter Ackroyd |
| Coffee with Einstein | 2008 | Carlos I. Calle | Roger Penrose |
| Coffee with Groucho | 2007 | Simon Louvish | |
| Coffee with Hemingway | 2007 | Kirk Curnutt | John Updike |
| Coffee with Isaac Newton | 2008 | Michael White | Bill Bryson |
| Coffee with Marilyn | 2007 | Yona Zeldis McDonough | |
| Coffee with Mark Twain | 2008 | Fred [Kaplan (biographer)|Fred Kaplan] | |
| Coffee with Michelangelo | 2007 | James W. Hall | John Julius Norwich |
| Coffee with Mozart | 2007 | Julian Rushton | John Tavener |
| Coffee with Oscar Wilde | 2007 | Merlin Holland | Simon Callow |
| Coffee with Plato | 2007 | Donald R. Moor | Robert M. Pirsig |
| Coffee with Shakespeare | 2008 | Stanley Wells | Joseph Fiennes |
| Coffee with the Buddha | 2007 | Joan Duncan Oliver | Annie Lennox |