Most modern biographers feed off celebrity like vampires let loose in a blood bank. That is why their books sell: they give readers the illusion of intimacy with people they will never know. Alexander Masters is different. He specialises in what one might call ‘marginal biography’, devoting hundreds of pages to individuals who live on the frayed edges of society, and often seem to be on the edge in other ways besides.
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £10.99. Tel: 08430 600033. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is a professor at Magdalen College, Oxford; his books include The Story of Alice and Becoming Dickens.
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