US Senator Hillary Clinton; image via christopherfountain.wordpress.com
Virginia Woolf – so Hermione Lee writes in Virginia Woolf, her 1997 biography of the celebrated writer – thought it immensely difficult to ever know another person.
Today the winner of the 2014 National Biography Award will be announced, chosen from a shortlist that includes literary efforts to get to know subjects who are already well-known, such as Gideon Haigh’s biography of Shane Warne, and those who are not, such as Janet Butler’s account of the life of an Australian nurse in Europe during the first world war.
