# The Camden Flat *A Biography of Amy Winehouse* — Legendary Biographies No. 168 - **Subject:** Amy Jade Winehouse - **Written by:** Donovan Hadley - **Shelf:** Music / Rock - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 190 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 190 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-133-8) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Desmond Vale (ISBN 979-8-90623-237-3) - **Content notes:** substance use; fatal alcohol poisoning; eating disorder Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/168-the-camden-flat.html ## About this book July 23, 2011, the third-floor flat at 30 Camden Square in north London. Amy Jade Winehouse, twenty-seven, is found dead in her bed by her bodyguard Andrew Morris at 3:54 p.m. The coroner's inquest will rule the cause of death alcohol poisoning — a blood-alcohol level of 416 mg per 100 ml, more than five times the British legal driving limit. She has joined the 27 Club: Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain. Donovan Hadley's biography opens earlier — in Southgate, north London, where Amy was born in 1983 to a Jewish-cab-driver father named Mitch and a pharmacist mother named Janis — and follows the arc through the Sylvia Young Theatre School expulsion, the Sylvia Young replacement Brit School years, the 2003 Frank debut album, the long Blake Fielder-Civil relationship and the 2007 marriage, the Back to Black of October 2006 and the long crack-and-heroin years of 2008-2009, the Rehab Grammys of February 2008, the Belgrade concert collapse of June 18, 2011 that the family had treated as a turning-point, and the morning of July 23. What emerges is a portrait of the British soul singer whose two albums remade the early-2000s pop sound and whose body the press apparatus had been writing about for the last five years of her life. ## Contents 1. The Jazz Singer's Granddaughter 2. The Sylvia Young Years 3. Frank 4. Blake 5. Back to Black 6. "Rehab" 7. The Paparazzi 8. Heroin 9. The Grammys 10. The Marriage 11. St Lucia 12. Reg Traviss 13. The Priory 14. Belgrade 15. Camden Square 16. July 23 17. The Aftermath 18. Lioness 19. Lioness Reborn 20. The Voice ## Questions **Who is The Camden Flat about?** Amy Jade Winehouse. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Camden Flat — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 5,387 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 59,000 words, 20 chapters, 190 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. **Does this book carry content warnings?** Yes: substance use; fatal alcohol poisoning; eating disorder. They are listed before you buy rather than discovered afterwards. The material is handled as evidence, not as spectacle. ## The writer Donovan Hadley is a Manchester-based culture writer for The Guardian and Sight & Sound. His biographies cover the film, theatre, and television figures whose work shaped the British and American midcentury. He spends his time researching archives to reconstruct the quiet moments behind major cultural milestones. His published work includes titles like The Nightmare Man, Frequency, and The Gap Year. He has also explored midcentury creative communities in books such as The Fifty Million Dollar Man, The USC Film School, Apartment Five C, Room 607, and The First Cast. He lives in Manchester, England, where he spends his weekends browsing local independent cinemas and collecting vintage film reels.