We're all story-telling creatures, and also I think that's the point about biography because the life is exemplary.

People don't give up power and privilege out of the goodness of their hearts.

For me the fascination with biography is the life of the individual in the context of history.

Eleanor [Marx] was involved in the 1889 Paris congress resolution that established May Day as an annual demonstration of the international solidarity of labour in the demand for a legal eight-hour day.

Before my book, the most common assessment of Eleanor Marx is "Yes, she's great but basically she's in the shadow of her father." Absolute bollocks. She fought him, she resisted, and she was not a kind of trocadateur of his ideas.

Many of us have had that experience of being in love with someone and then they end up being your enemy and there's a stranger in your bed.

When you're writing, you're making decisions about compression and the shape of a life, which are very similar to how we experience our inner consciousness.