Frances Wilson

Good biographers make the best companions

Frances Wilson’s favourite literary biographies include Father and Son, The Quest for Corvo, and Doctor Johnson and Mr Savage

Portrait of Edmund Gosse by John Singer Sargent. ‘The opening lines of Father and Son are the finest I know,’ says Frances Wilson. Alamy

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Andrew Tettenborn

The Lords needs more peers like Charlotte Owen

It is clear who is the unnamed target of Labour’s rule change over political nominations to the House of Lords. When two bright but relatively unknown political advisers aged 29 and 30, Charlotte Owen and Ross Kempsell, were elevated to the Lords last year after being nominated by Boris Johnson, there were loud complaints. Critics

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