lirazel asked me this. Now, to me, a biography I'd reccommend should ideally:

- offer a compelling portrait of its subject in the context of the times and other people said subject lives in

- be decently annotated, because it's not a novel, and I do want to know which primary source material the author bases their conclusions on, especially when it comes to motivations (so if you're telling me X loathed Y, I would like a footnote somewhere telliing me "See letter blablah blah")

- be fluently written; I've read biographies that are good with the facts and the sources but manage to come across as very dull due to the (lack of) writing style.

These demands can sometimes come into conflict. For example, a few years ago I read Nancy Goldstones "Daughters of the Winter Queen", which was very entertainingly written and came across as informative, and told me a lot of new things about historical characters I didn't know much about before, with one exception (i.e. one of the daughters I did know things about, having read her memoirs). Then I read Nancy Goldstone's "Ihe Shadow of the Empress", about historical figures I knew a lot about. This was also entertainingly written, but alas, I found big mistakes or at best omissions to produce a certain impression, or downright falsifications every second page. This in turn made me distrustful towards the earlier book. So no more Goldstone recs, though she can write well. Otoh, Simon Beale's two volume biography of Joseph II is thorough and reliable and dense - but not easy to read, especially if that's your first going at the era and the people in question.

All this being said, here are some recs for biographies which I found both readable and reliable (with the caveat that research always marches on, so with older biographies you can always have the experience that new discoveries can mean some earlier assumptions are now outdated or disproven). I've also separated them for biographies focused on one person (or two), and books focused on an era which is described through the eyes of an ensemble of (historical) characters; not classic biographies but still biographical and historical in nature.

A) Biographies of individuals

Emma Southon: Agrippina. For a more detailed review, see here. Short version: Gets around the source problems by directly adressing them, creates a vivid portrait, since I have it on audio I keep relistening to favourite passages.

Claire Tomalin: Charles Dickens. A detailed review is here. Short version: Tomalin comes near the platonic ideal of a biographer as someone who on the one hand is empathic and makes it clear in non-abstract terms why the reader should care about this person but on the other doesn't shy away from depicting the flaws in a non-prettifying manner. Why this one and not her earlier biography of Ellen Ternan, The Invisible Woman? Frankly, because Dickens himself offers far more material to write about than Nelly, who herself is included in the Dickens bio.

Mike Duncan: Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution. A detailed review is here; again, it's a biography with great empathy for its subject that doesn't shy away from the less admirable parts of said subject's life.

Jean Orieux: Voltaire. You can find a detailed review and plenty of quotes here; it's an older biography (i.e. we're talking several decades here), and highly opinionated, but a) the author makes clear when it's his opinion he voices, instead of disguising them and/or treating them as facts, and b) it definitely fulfills the requirements of being both compellingly written and offering annotations for all its assertions.


Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson series (still unfinished, the last published volume ended with Johnson's first year in office: Now, the sheer size of each volume - I think each over 1000 pages - is a challenge, but I can say without hesitation that these are the best political biographies I've ever read. Caro makes the US political institutions comprehensible to a non-American like yours truly, how the Congress works, how the Senate works, the appointment of Judges etc. He gets across how many people are actually involved in the legislative process without this reader feeling adrift, and he brings these many people to life. He never demonizes Johnson's opponents to build up Johnson. He manages to get across both Johnson's gazillion flaws ("flaws" is at times putting it mildly), but also his incredible strengths. If you have a competence kink for politics, and getting things done, Johnson is your man. At the same time, Caro notably builds up to the not yet reached Vietnam era because it's pretty clear that some of the same traits that enabled Johnson to make it to the top and push through more social reform legislation than any other president since FDR will also cause him to make misjudgment after misjudgment on Vietnam. More detailed reviews of volumes I and III, and volume IV. Let me add that when I watched Spielberg's Lincoln, I had the problem which another European commenter memorably described of watching that film feeling like attending a service of a religion you're not part of. (At times, you can literally see the halo around Lincoln's head because of the way Spielberg frames him.) This is definitely not the case here. Now of course LBJ is a very different character from Abraham Lincoln, and one of Caro's points is actually that the lessening of respect for the Presidency and the person of the President (which he regrets) started with Johnson, not, as commonly seen, with Nixon, but for me, Johnson the infinitely flawed but ultra competent is both more believable and more compelling than Lincoln the Saint.

b) Portrait of Eras via Biographies

It's getting German. Thankfully, several of these have been translated, so I can rec them to non-German speakers.

Uwe Wittstock: February 33: The Winter of Literature In which our author describes how a Republic turns into a fascist dictatorship within a few weeks through the eyes of some of Germany's greatest writers, male and female, Jewish or not. If you're German, you're probably more familiar with some of these than if you're not, but all of them are brought to life, and the quotes are from their letters, diaries and interviews at the time, not with hindsight. The contemporary relevance is obvious, but even leaving that aside, it's just a damn good read. Wittstock has published last year "Marseille 1940", in which he describes the intellectuals fleeing the Nazis in increasingly occupied France, which is excellent as well, but hasn't been translated into English yet.

Evelyn Juers: House of Exile. In which Ms. Juers uses the same quoting from letters and diaries technique to describe the fates of a couple of European exiles ending up in the US, focused on Heinrich Mann and his wife Nelly, with brother Thomas, Brecht and others also playing important parts; a detailed review is here. (My only complaint is that it also includes Virginia Woolf - not because I have anything against her, or that she's not ably described, but she really has no connection to the other characters who are all connected to each other.) Very moving, vivid, and again of great contemporary relevance.


Leonard Horowski: Das Europa der Könige. Alas, not translated into English, but a must-read if you can read German and are in any way interested in the later 17th and in the 18th century. It's an incredibly entertaining overview of Europe (that includes you, Brits!) from the later Louis IV era to just about the end of the French Revolution, and feels as if you're told all the good (and hot) gossip by an insider of the various courts, whether it's one of the big ones (i.e. Versailles) or the smaller scale German principalities. Horowski uses memoirs and letters but also - as opposed to, say, John Julius Norwich - points out when an entertaining story is extremely unlikely to have happened, and if there is counter evidence. And he's really great at making constant connections. (Not just all the royals are related to each other all over the continent, but so are a lot of their courtiers, lovers and mistresses, and that does matter.) It's witty, it's fun, it's immensely readable, and disproves anyone who believes to remain factual you have to be boring.

Lastly: Happy Birthdaylirazel!


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