For a biography to sing it needs to be written with energy and passion. The biographer, driven by curiosity and the desire to understand what makes their subject tick, or in Helen Vendler’s words, ‘the inner dynamic of the life’, must be open to all sorts of discoveries and challenges. So how do you write such a story? Who do you write about, and why? What practical, ethical and personal complications arise? In this masterclass, the award-winning biographer Bernadette Brennan shares her insights and experience into the often fraught, always fascinating, art of biography.