In his own history, and in an attempt to broaden this definition of biography, Hamilton refers to and discusses an immensely wide range of authors. He includes all the prominent figures one would expect to find in any history of biography: Plutarch and Suetonius, Johnson and Boswell, Carlyle and Gassing, Freud, Strachey and Woolf, but also many others whose appearance comes as something of a surprise: Shakespeare, Orson Welles and Camus, for example. While insisting on the connection between biography and actual lives, Hamilton takes a flexible approach to genre and easily includes drama, fiction, and film in a way that some might question. It is in these literary works, rather than in those formally styled as biography, that one sometimes finds the more interesting approach to the depiction of a life, he argues, pointing to the contrast between the complex presentation of individual life and character in the Victorian novel and the much narrower depiction deemed acceptable in what he terms Victorian ‘pseudobiography’. The breadth of Hamilton’s approach is evident also in one of the most attractive features of the book: its inclusion of short extracts from pivotal biographical works. There are passages here from some of the authors one would expect, such as Benvenuto Cellini and James Baldwin. But here, too, there are surprises, such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, an extract from a diary of the aide­de-camp of General Patton, describing his arrival at a concentration camp, and several lines from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

This book offers not just a history of biography, but also a powerful defence of it as something that is ‘integral to the western concept of individuality. It is thus integral to our understanding of ourselves and our world.’ There can be no doubting Hamilton’s passion, but sometimes the claims he makes for biography are, to say the least, excessive.

Biography has always had to find a middle way between the commemorative and the crucial analysis of a life, but it is the critical angle that is to him the more important. Hamilton argues that, from the very beginning, those writing biography have challenged received ideas of privacy and reputation in their attempt to portray their subjects, often in ways that did not please major religious or political authorities. Some of those who fought this battle for intellectual freedom paid for it with their lives: according to Hamilton, Sir Walter Raleigh is biography’s first martyr.

At no point has biography been more important than in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when it became fundamental not only to our broad social understanding but also to ‘the ideals of democracy, as opposed to dictatorship or tyranny’. This was also the time when biography finally came into its own through film and television, as well as print media, but not without huge battles. First there was the struggle that followed on from the approaches of Freud, Strachey and Woolf, in the face both of convention and of censorship law, to write biographies that seriously explored sexuality and intimate life. There was also the question of writing critically, of approaching a biographical subject as an equal, and without the deference and praise, that seemed so much a part of earlier commemorative biographies. But there was a more serious issue in the 1920s and 1930s. Censorship and defamation laws that served to protect the rich and powerful in the West also prevented critical biographies of political figures, such as Hitler and Hirohito, from being published or depicted in cinema. In Hamilton’s view, this meant also a failure to prevent their increasing aggression. At this point, Hamilton’s claims for the potential role of biography become absolutely incredible. Under the censorship laws, he argues ‘biography, in the West, had proven a broken reed. Once the Japanese launched their air strike on Pearl Harbour ... the fate of democracy lay no longer in critical, incisive biography but in the response of ordinary and extraordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen.’

Just as World War I had led to major developments in the form of the ‘new biography, World War II was followed by a freeing up of legislative restrictions, enabling a new frankness in the treatment of sexual and other questions, which allowed biographers to treat their subjects in a much more thorough fashion. Hamilton offers a succinct and interesting discussion of the major biographical developments of the past half century in terms of film and television documentary, as well as books. He encompasses literary experiments, such as Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), as well as the discussion of ethical questions in biography associated with Janet Malcolm, along with a survey of work of the well-known biographers he admires, including Michael Holroyd, Richard Holmes, Victoria Glendenning and Hermione Lee.

Hamilton’s book has been beautifully produced by Harvard University Press. Its illustrations and carefully set extracts from other texts, combined with its immense scope, passion and assured tone, make it an extremely engaging book to read. Whether it will convince academics of the need to pay biography the kind of attention demanded here is, however, open to question.