Nominate a Biography: what authors say

Derek Jarman by Tony Peake*

Most of us, as we live our lives, like to peer over the fence at our neighbours to see how they are faring in theirs. Maybe, we think, they can teach us something we don't know? Or confirm for us what we do already sense or know. Or simply make us feel better about being ourselves by virtue of their foibles and failures. In essence, this is what biography is about: peering over the fence at a neighbour. And, as such, it can often be highly instructive. To observe the arc of a life from birth to death and how that arc intersects with a person's work (mostly we read the biographies of people in whose work we are interested) can be exceptionally revealing. Why and how did X make Y film? What were their demons? Their deepest desires?

Yet biography is also fallible; a field filled with pitfalls. Just as peering over a fence can give a wrong impression of a neighbour, so too with biography. All very well to try and get under the skin of a subject - but is it ever possible to get properly under the skin of another? Indeed, can one ever hope to get properly under one's own skin? In fact, is anything ever as clear and definable, as reducible to an essence, as biography would have us believe? Is not fiction perhaps, rather than non-fiction, better equipped to reach an understanding of others?

In writing Derek Jarman's biography I grappled over a seven year period with questions such as these. At times I felt I knew Jarman better than he knew himself - except wasn't that by definition a nonsense? Of course it was. But what I also found was that even if I couldn't finally arrive at certain truth, the journey itself was reward enough. Particularly in the case of such an avowedly 'autobiographical' artist as Jarman, who drew so intensely on his own life and experiences for his art. In interviewing Jarman's many friends and colleagues and trawling through his papers, I traced a kind of parallel story to one he actually lived; a story which, by keeping closely to the contours of the original, could throw new light on what Jarman represented.

I wrote Derek Jarman's biography largely because he asked me to, but also because I believe him to have been a man whose life wonderfully illuminates Britain in the late twentieth century. The way in which Jarman reacted to his country and culture, and the way in which his country and culture affected him: the symbiosis between these often opposing forces is endlessly fascinating. Jarman is a lens through which, just as he himself did, we may observe and study the world we inhabit.

Because Jarman died recently and relatively young, I was able to speak to a great many friends and colleagues in order to build up a picture of his life. I also drew heavily on his own writings and papers. Janet Moat at the bfi Library was hugely helpful, patient and generous of her time in allowing me access to the library's collection of Jarman papers. My days spent at a table in the corner of her office were among the most enjoyable of my research.

Jonathan Coe's recently published "Like a Fiery Elephant: the story of B. S Johnson" (Picador) is a biography that towers about many others for the thrilling way in which it examines the whole process of writing biography (in this case, literary biography). It is a book not only about a writer, but about the very act of writing; about how to tell a story and whether the telling a story can ever be said to represent the truth.

*Permission granted by the publishers, Little, Brown, London