Mark Bostridge
Lives & Hard Times
‘Why do you do this? Write biography?’, asks the character of Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett’s new play, The Habit of Art, currently at the National Theatre. ‘Why not make your own way in the world instead of hitching a lift on the life of someone else?’ Later in the play, Bennett has W H Auden express a similar viewpoint. A biographer is ‘invariably second-rank even when he or she is first-rate’.
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'I inadvertently saw "Saturn Devouring His Son" in my early teens and it was a very unsettling thing to come across.'
@robinsimonbaj on Goya.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/he-painted-it-black
'The narrative moves fluently between the raffish ... life he was living there, his main love affair and friendships – most of them kept up for a lifetime – and his journalism.'
Jeremy Treglown weighs up Hermione Lee's biography of Tom Stoppard.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-long-road-to-leopoldstadt
Lovely review here of my new one - and in such good company! Cheers to @NJCooper_crime https://twitter.com/Lit_Review/status/1316650065486807040