In Testaments Betrayed, Milan Kundera says: ‘Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives, but they think they know all about Stendhal’s or Faulkner’s.’ In The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Janet Malcolm says: ‘The transgressive nature of biography is rarely acknowledged, but it is the only explanation for biography’s status as a popular genre.’
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £25 Tel: 08430 600033. Craig Raine’s latest book is More Dynamite, a collection of essays and reviews. His most recent poetry collection is How Snow Falls.
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