When my daughter was young, I explained to her my full name and that sometimes I incorporated my maiden name as well.

My three-year-old daughter tipped her head to one side looking perplexed, and then said, ‘<i>Do you often talk to yourself Mummy?</i>’

I laughed at her literal translation, smiling at how seemingly inconsequential such nonsense was to a child. However, she was right in more than one way for I do talk to myself. Quite a lot actually, and usually on paper.

I began this act of conversing with paper at the age of ten. I have kept all of my diaries, almost forty years of them in total and looking at them is akin to peeling back the layers of a psychological onion. I can trace where certain habits begun. I can see there are elements of my character which are immutable to the passage of time. I can also discern distinct patterns and the moments where such patterns were interrupted or where silver linings prevailed and what lessons were extracted from them.

Hindsight is such a powerful gift but whilst travailing life we can all too often become hoodwinked by the presiding assumption that life is mere chaos and meaningless. And yet, it is my experience in writing biographies that lives do contain meaning; that the patterns acted out often provide an overarching purpose and that in the end joy tends to triumph over agony.

I take great pleasure and certain pride in capturing a life upon the page, drawing out its essential elements; the meaning behind a person taking a left turn instead of a right; the moment when the alchemy of victory triumphed over apparent victimhood and the regret that comes, not through unhappy events, but through not fully living in one’s fullness.

Within each life I believe there exists a gleaming diamond which, as my role as a biographer, I must extract from the rough rocks surrounding it, shaping it into a crafted story rich in meaning and which in its entirety makes satisfying sense.