Cirrus@Austlit

'Writing biography,” as Judith Brett confides in the opening pages of The Enigmatic Mr Deakin  (Text; $49.99), “is an invasive business, and perilous”. Sifting through the “surviving evidence” for “plausible paths”, the challenges are daunting: separating myth from fact, establishing intimacy and retaining distance, liberating and controlling the subject’s voice, being fearless in judgement while maintaining fairness and compassion, embroidering the private and public lives, retrieving life both as it was lived (a phantom) and as it was remembered - and, finally, deciding whether or not to break free from the tidal force of chronology. There are as many ways to write biography as there are to live.'  (Introduction)