Authors Electric

I’ve always enjoyed reading about other writers’ lives, so, when I began to write programmes for radio it seemed natural to write about writers.   One of these programmes became a biography, and then I wrote another and another and suddenly I was a biographer, peering into other writers’ lives on a daily basis and doing a kind of upmarket exposé of their relationships and the progress of their careers.  I’ve often wondered why I’m so fascinated by the process of becoming a writer.  Am I hoping to learn some magic trick?  Or am I simply guilty of being a literary lace-curtain twitcher? About 8 years ago, as part of an Arts Council project, I was asked to write a biographical pamphlet about Margaret Forster, northern author of the iconic nineteen sixties novel ‘Georgy Girl’. The concept was to explore her work in the context of her life, with the focus on books rather than biography, but as many of her novels appear to have autobiographical elements and she...