'This exhilarating book, part biography, part autobiography, shows the biographer as sleuth and huntsman, tracking his subjects through space and time.' - Hilary Spurling, Observer 'A modern masterpiece' - Michael Holroyd 'Wonderful' - A. S. Byatt 'Nothing is simple in this intricate, complicated and fascinating book, which is like a set of Russian dolls, biography containing travel-writing containing autobiography containing and so on! Holmes is indeed a biographer and a romantic in every sense.' - Richard Boston, Guardian 'His purpose is to locate "the personal life that is hidden in, and below, the printed page" and then to understand that life by and act of identification. There is nothing more eloquent in this book than Holmes' account of the biographer's obsession with the past - that feeling of being "haunted"' - Peter Ackroyd, Sunday Times 'His books read like shouts of joy' - New York Times Book Review

Richard Holmes was born in London in 1945 and educated at Downside School and Churchill College, Cambridge. In 1974 he published "Shelley: The Pursuit" which won the Somerset Maugham Award and was described by Stephen Spender as "surely the best biography of Shelley ever written". He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 1992 was awarded an OBE. He lives in London and Norwich with the novelist Rose Tremain.