'A must read ... intriguing and satisfying ... All the sketches makes illuminating reading, in many cases deliberately setting out to provoke a rethink of earlier biographies ... I thoroughly enjoyed the book; indeed I devoured it' Athene Donald, Guardian
'Compulsive, fastidious journey through 50 years of his own notebooks ... Holmes gives an insight into his methods', Books of the Year, Observer
'A glorious series of essays on the art of life writing and a worthy successor to his earlier volumes on the craft, Footsteps and Sidetracks ... heaven for Holmes fans ... the best account imaginable for the richness of his form' Observer
'This collection of 50 years of high-profile lectures and anthology contributions offers us a lorryload of arresting subjects ... 'This Long Pursuit' is distinguished by a geniality of tone ... Holmes's eye for detail is as sharp as ever' The Times
'Holmes writes beautifully of the perils of memory and forgetting ... perhaps the essay that best sums up Holmes's endeavour is his superb explosion of the accepted account of Coleridge's 1808 lectures to the Royal Institution ... a masterly performance by ... the greatest literary biographer of his generation' The Oldie
Richard Holmes was born in London in 1945 and educated at Downside School and Churchill College, Cambridge.
In 1974 his Shelley: The Pursuit won the Somerset Maugham Award and was described by Stephen Spender as 'surely the best biography of Shelley ever written'. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was awarded an OBE in 1992 and the Biographers' Club Lifetime Services to Biography Prize in 2014.
He lives in London and Norwich with the novelist Rose Tremain.