Life-writing and biography takes many different forms, from informal memoirs reliant on personal interaction to weighty tomes built on hours of painstakingly close scrutiny of fragmentary historical documents and archival evidence. Readers are introduced to new facets of well-known characters, or drawn closer to the lives of ordinary people living extraordinary lives, and are offered a transformative understanding of a figure and the time in which they live. Interaction between the mundane and the exceptional, the commonplace and the unusual, the renowned and the obscure bring to life the complexities of individual personalities. Here, three Faculty members talk about their recent work in this area. For Marina Mackay and Marion Turner, their subjects sit firmly within their usual field of research, but for Bart van Es the connection is on a rather more personal level.