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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: Should biographers imitate their subjects?
Description: Would you don a diving suit or take a drug in a quest to understand the life of someone else? "Following in the footsteps" is an obsession for biographers as they travel the world to bring their subjects to life, sometimes with dangerous consequences.Hull University Professor of Creative Writing Martin Goodman, biographer of the sorcerer Carlos Castaneda, the Indian mystic Mother Meera and the scientist John Scott Haldane, draws on visits to high peaks, the seabed, coal mines and monasteries to reveal the challenges of the biographer's art. This episode was recorded at Sage Gateshead at...