Born and educated in England, Lavinia Greacen lives in a whitewashed house in the Dublin mountains, and the subjects of her biographies have a blend of Irish and English influences. Her newest book is J.G. Farrell In His Own Words, the Selected Letters and Diaries, which she has edited. (Cork University Press, October 2009, with a foreword by John Banville). Ranging from childhood to the day before his death, the Faber and Booker-winning Farrell’s distinctive voice has the impact of autobiography. Whether light-hearted or introspective, teasingly tongue-in-cheek or businesslike, these previously unpublished letters reveal the private man, and the timing is right. The 2008 ‘Best of Booker’ drew fresh attention to his name when he was chosen to be among the six out of forty-one previous Booker winners for the international vote.

Her biography J.G. Farrell, the Making of a Writer was published by Bloomsbury in 1999. The prize-winning author of the Empire Trilogy – Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip – was drowned at the age of 44 while fishing from rocks in County Cork. But energy, humour, talent and ambition infuse his life, from boyhood in Ireland to his literary apprenticeship in Paris, New York and London. ‘Read this book,’ The Times recommended, ‘then read Farrell’s Empire Trilogy; that will do justice to the man and his work.’

Chink (Macmillan 1990), her first biography, is the story of Major General Eric ‘Chink’ Dorman-Smith (subsequently Dorman O Gowan), the charismatic Irishman who met Ernest Hemingway in 1918 and became his military ideal. Chink is recognisable throughout Hemingway’s books, and as Auchinleck’s chief of staff in July 1942 is credited with the plan that halted Rommel at the first battle of Alamein. ‘I cannot think of any account of soldiering, by a man or a woman, which more convincingly conveys its bloody allure,’ wrote Frederic Raphael in the Listener.

 Lavinia Greacen is currently writing Voltaire’s Last Case, the life of the controversial general Count de Lally of the Irish Brigade in the Service of France. Lally’s secret trial and execution in 1766 became an international cause célebre, led by his friend Voltaire.