Is it ever possible to tell the truth of a life, and is there even such a thing as truth? These were the questions that faced the political biographer Anne Perkins when she re-examined documents from the archive of the politician Barbara Castle, seven years on from the publication of her biography of this pioneering Labour cabinet minister. She guides us through the paraphernalia of the biographer's craft, from diary entries to notes scrawled on torn-up cigarette packets and menu cards – and explains how they caused her to misread a key episode in the history of the Labour party: the night Khrushchev came to dinner.
The journalist Richard Lloyd Parry, who covered the murder in Tokyo of 21-year-old Lucie Blackman, is another writer who has been interpreting recent history. A decade after Blackman was killed, he has published a disturbing account of the case, People Who Eat Darkness, which tells how her death began to take over his life, and shines a light on Japan, the media and family life.
The novelist Geoff Dyer and the journalist Charlotte Higgins join us in the studio to discuss the difficulties in reconstructing the past, especially when the people most closely involved may have good reason to conceal what really happened.
Reading list
People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry (Jonathan Cape)
Buy it at the Guardian bookshop
Working the Room by Geoff Dyer (Canongate)
Buy it at the Guardian bookshop
Red Queen by Anne Perkins (Macmillan)
