Ann Wroe Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul

The acclaimed biographer and obituarist for The Economist for over 20 years reflects on a career spent pursuing life: a process, as she sees it, not of chronological narration but of trying to seize souls. In a blend of memoir, biography, observation and poetry, she reflects on the art and impossibility of capturing this phenomenon on the page. Through her experiences and those of others, through people she has known, studied or merely glimpsed through windows (she even once wrote an obituary of a fish), she movingly explores what makes a life and how that life lingers after. Described by The Guardian and a 'beautiful and brave book', 'Lifescapes encourages us to take a deep breath, contemplate life more keenly and acknowledge the miraculous if – and when – we find it.'

Talking to Julia Wheeler