The Royal Society of Literature and the Arvon Foundation are delighted to announce a personalized and practical class in which to explore the different forms of autobiographical and biographical writing and the ways that they have altered over the years.  Participants will be asked to submit a short piece of writing in advance which will they will then receive feedback on during the class.  Participants will also be provided with a biography reading list.  The class is open to writers at all stages, and it will be a discussion as much as anything, with people bringing their own ideas, skills and views.

Caroline Moorehead is an outstanding writer and journalist who throughout her career has combined writing of the highest quality with an unusual willingness to work for the benefit of other people. She has served on the committees of PEN, the London Library, the Society of Authors, and the Royal Society of Literature, of which she was vice-Chairman from 1998-2000. She has published nine books, which include biographies of Bertrand Russell (1992), Iris Origo (2001), and Martha Gellhorn, the last published to great acclaim in 2003 and short listed for the Whitbread Prize. Since the mid- Seventies, she has also written regularly as a journalist, first as a columnist for the Times, then for the Independent, and currently as a freelance, on prisoners of conscience and human rights, and for ten years (1990-2000) she co-produced an annual series for BBC television on human rights abuses, ‘Human Rights, Human Wrongs’. Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees (2005) is a study of the international refugee problem, arising out of a support progamme she has helped to start for African refugees in Cairo, where she worked extensively on the ground, interviewing refugees and transcribing their stories.  Her most recent book, which was short listed for the 2009 Costa Biography Award, is Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era. It is based on the Marquise’s first-hand accounts of surviving the French Revolution and navigating more than fifty years of political upheaval that followed.

This Masterclass is now sold out.