“The dead may always be biographically immortal” #richardholmes #20BOS26 Book 7

I guess we all have authors who are our own personal literary catnip, and a writer who’s become that for me is Richard Holmes. I’ve written about him a number of times here on the Ramblings, and his books about the art of the biographer and his life pursuing this are some of my favourites. For some reason, I was recently compelled to pick up what could be regarded as the third in a trilogy, after “Footsteps” and “Sidetracks“, and that’s “This Long Pursuit”. First published in 2017, it draws together a number of Holmes’s essays in three loose groupings, and I found it impossible to put down! The book is subtitled “Reflections of a Romantic Biographer”, and it’s divided into three sections: ‘Confessions’, ‘Restorations’ and ‘Afterlives’. Each section contains five essays, broadly themed to the section’s title, and they’re fascinating. The first part is perhaps the most obviously autobiographical, with Holmes looking at his adventures in search of biographical subjects from different…