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Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie
Not yet published
Expected 24 Feb 26The compelling story of the second half of Bowie’s life, exploring the untold story of these latter years when Bowie moved from commercial failure to his final masterpiece.
When David Bowie died on January 10th, 2016, aged sixty-nine, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. Politicians and fellow musicians alike fell over themselves to pay tribute to the former Starman, and his home cities of New York and London saw thousands of well-wishers assemble to play his music and console each other in their hour of grief.
Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up. His 80s career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock with the new group Tin Machine 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.
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.
It climaxed with his final masterpiece, Blackstar, and the unprecedented—yet entirely appropriate—theatrical flourish of his departure from the stage on which he had thrived. And as it did so, Bowie passed from greatness into legend, and the world could only look on in admiration.
When David Bowie died on January 10th, 2016, aged sixty-nine, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. Politicians and fellow musicians alike fell over themselves to pay tribute to the former Starman, and his home cities of New York and London saw thousands of well-wishers assemble to play his music and console each other in their hour of grief.
Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up. His 80s career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock with the new group Tin Machine 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.
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.
It climaxed with his final masterpiece, Blackstar, and the unprecedented—yet entirely appropriate—theatrical flourish of his departure from the stage on which he had thrived. And as it did so, Bowie passed from greatness into legend, and the world could only look on in admiration.
384 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication February 24, 2026
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About the author
Alexander Larman
12 books107 followersAlexander Larman is an author, historian and journalist. After reading English at Oxford, from where he graduated with a First, he ghost-wrote and edited various memoirs and biographies, including the late artist and flâneur Sebastian Horsley’s Dandy In The Underworld. His involvement with the book led Horsley to say ‘there is no man in London more capable of genius – or a flop – than Alexander Larman’.
He began his own writing career with Blazing Star (Head of Zeus, 2014), a biography of the 17th century poet and libertine Lord Rochester, and followed this with Restoration (Head of Zeus, 2016) a social history of the year 1666, and Byron’s Women (Head of Zeus, 2016), an ‘anti-biography’ of the poet Lord Byron and the significant women in his life. His next book, The Crown in Crisis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020) was a revisionist history of the abdication saga. It was selected by the Times, Daily Mail and Daily Express as one of their best books of the year and led to significant international media coverage of the new revelations about the event.
As a journalist, Larman regularly contributes to titles including The Observer, The Critic, the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and The Chap, for which he serves as literary editor. He lives in Oxford with his wife and daughter.
He began his own writing career with Blazing Star (Head of Zeus, 2014), a biography of the 17th century poet and libertine Lord Rochester, and followed this with Restoration (Head of Zeus, 2016) a social history of the year 1666, and Byron’s Women (Head of Zeus, 2016), an ‘anti-biography’ of the poet Lord Byron and the significant women in his life. His next book, The Crown in Crisis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020) was a revisionist history of the abdication saga. It was selected by the Times, Daily Mail and Daily Express as one of their best books of the year and led to significant international media coverage of the new revelations about the event.
As a journalist, Larman regularly contributes to titles including The Observer, The Critic, the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and The Chap, for which he serves as literary editor. He lives in Oxford with his wife and daughter.
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Review of advance copy
I really enjoyed this one, which I read on the back of the BBC Lazarus documentary which I watched the previous week. The author is a bit younger than me, and I think that one’s relationship with Bowie and his music is much influenced by how and when you first encountered him and his music. For me it was the horizon changing moment that Starman with the blue guitar played on Lift Off With Ayesha on ITV in 1972. I was 11. I was bought into the spell at that moment and like Larman sought for enduring affirmations or repetitions of the thrill and chill of such iconic moments through the eighties, nineties and naughtiest and it felt as though those moments were few and far between….. until Next Day / Blackstar. Lazarus has really made me revisit the albums of those times and with Larman’s guidance, to listen with new ears. A really valuable friend of a read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review