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Jeremy Hodges

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Contact: [email protected]
Local authority: Falkirk
Languages: English
Jeremy Hodges's headshot

Writing biography is a big challenge. You must gather information like a journalist and solve mysteries like a detective before you can turn all the pieces of jigsaw into a narrative that flows and, hopefully, lives. Thousands of these pieces go into the life of Robert Louis Stevenson, and after 20 years I am still collecting them.

My book Mrs Jekyll & Cousin Hyde, revealing the long and troubled relationship between RLS and his cousin Katharine, deals with just one aspect of a highly complex, charismatic and contradictory character. To be a good biographer, you need to forget about ego and work invisibly behind the scenes to present the central character as directly as possible.

One of the most rewarding tasks I have undertaken was invisibly editing Lesley Lendrum's biography of her grandfather Neil Munro, helping her bring to life another much-loved Scottish author. Editing a biography can be almost as much fun as writing it. My new challenge after years immersed in the life of the celebrity RLS is to tell the story of a nobody, not a comic Mr Pooter but a down-and-out nonentity, a person nobody has heard of, and to make it a tale worth telling.

Local authorities will visit

Aberdeen City; Aberdeenshire; Angus; Argyll and Bute; Clackmannanshire; Dumfries and Galloway; Dundee; East Ayrshire; East Dunbartonshire; East Lothian; East Renfrewshire; Edinburgh City; Falkirk; Fife; Glasgow City; Highland; Inverclyde; Midlothian; Moray; Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles); North Ayrshire; North Lanarkshire; Orkney Islands; Perth and Kinross; Renfrewshire; Scottish Borders; Shetland; South Ayrshire; South Lanarkshire; Stirling; West Dunbartonshire; West Lothian

Events will deliver

Panel event; Reading; Talk; Workshop; Chairing events

Topics of work

Adventure; Biography & memoir; Childhood; Editing & editing your own work; History; Travel writing

Age groups published for

Adults

Age groups will work with

18+

Audience size

0-10; 11-30; 31-100; 100-500; 500+