The write profile
For Twitter history-lovers, the UK’s return to lockdown offered a chance to catch up on books they had missed first time around – particularly biographies. ANNA WHITELOCK joined the club
One of the very few benefits of returning to lockdown living, for some of us, is having the time to read – and Twitter is always a reliable source of book recommendations. Helen McCarthy (@HistorianHelen) asked for nominations of “the best historical biographies of all time – any period or geography, scholarly or popular”. John Gallagher (@earlymodernjohn) was quick out of the blocks, suggesting Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s 2013 biography of Italian poet, playwright and journalist Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose First World War experiences made him a national hero. Gallagher praised The Pike as “propulsive and unputdownable (often said, very rarely true), and formally incredibly exciting”.
One of my colleagues at Royal Holloway, University of London, Edward Madigan (@MadiganEdward) recommended “Negro With a Hat, Colin Grant’s 2008 biography of [Jamaican political activist] Marcus Garvey; a vivid portrait of a flawed but fascinating man, and a really insightful journey through Caribbean, African-American and anticolonial history of the early 20th century”.
Jonathan Healey (@SocialHistoryOx) picked “Catherine Drinker Bowen’s 1957 biography of [Elizabethan barrister and politician] Edward Coke, The Lion and the Throne. Academically very dated now, of course, but a wonderfully colourful read.”
Dr Charlotte Lydia Riley (@lottelydia) pointed to Troublemaker, Kathleen Burk’s 2000 biography of leading British historian
AJP Taylor. She praised it as “a richly written life, which cares about things like what he earned and how he wrote, as well as his upbringing and love affairs”.
Anna Neima (@Anna_Neima) suggested Maya Jasanoff’s 2017 The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, which looks at the life, times and literary inspiration of novelist Joseph Conrad. She rated it as “a great example of how to use biography as a way into a wider history. Compellingly and beautifully written, and not afraid to jump over large patches of its subject’s life!” Ben Griffin (@history_griffin) gave it real thought, nominating a whole host of titles. But in his words: “Of recent scholarly biographies, Julian Jackson’s life of Charles de Gaulle [2018’s A Certain Idea of France] stands out for its ability to maintain a sense of proportion when shifting between a colossal ego and the events going on around him.”
Hussein AH Omar (@chebhocine) highlighted Janet Malcolm’s 1994 The Silent Woman, which “aside from being a biography of Sylvia Plath’s biographers and biographies, is unputdownable”. There it is again: the measure of putdownability. Finally, Joshua Cole (@joshco61) recommended Michael Holroyd’s 1994 biography of 19th and 20th-century English writer and critic Lytton Strachey, citing “sexual radicalism, gossip, Virginia Woolf, JM Keynes. And did I say gossip?” You did, and I’m sold!