A Portrait of Leni Reifenstahl, by Aubrey Salkeld (Pimlico, £10 in UK)

Leni Riefenstahl, of course, is the woman who filmed not only the 1936 Berlin Olympics but the Nazi rally at Nuremberg, and failed to live down the latter achievement. Origi a talented dancer, she turned to acting after a leg injury and was an established film star before she proved her gifts as a director. Riefenstahl was never officially a Nazi, nor was she anti-Jewish, but she was undoubtedly an admirer of Hitler for a time, even if she was never as close to him as is often claimed - certainly she was never his mistress, though she had numerous lovers. Her wartime marriage to a soldier on the Eastern Front ended in separation and divorce, while she herself spent the immediate post-war years in poverty and social isolation. Aubrey Salkeld gives a sympathetic portrait of her as essentially apolitical, but Riefenstahl comes over as self-centred and unbendingly ambitious, with rather a flair for making enemies.