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A biographer’s tale: beware of meeting your literary heroes

1 December 2018

9:00 AM

1 December 2018

9:00 AM

Germaine Greer described biographers as ‘vultures’. I prefer to think of myself as a version of Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade: vultures hunt by instinct but the two private investigators went after secrets with deliberate foolhardy masochism.

It’s human nature to want to know more about the writers we admire — but what you discover isn’t always pleasant.

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