Is it ever right for biographers to make things up?

Joe Moshenska was the Miltonian biographer featured in the Guardian article ‘When Milton met Galileo‘ I posted on my blog 4 years ago.

In this review of his new book Making Darkness Light, he is getting some stick for “lacing a biography with imaginary events” e.g “that Milton sought to be a prophet”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/ever-right-biographers-make-things/

It’s on my Christmas present list and I am looking forward to finding out if it is ‘historical fiction’ rather than biography, and how it may be comparable with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy

Inspired on by the line “how time has ticked a heaven round the stars” from Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’, I had my haiku medley featuring Galileo published in Love The Words Anthology for Dylan Day 2021 (discoverdylanthomas.com)

Here is a revised version I tweeted. If you think it preferable to the version published, I’d be glad to know!

Eyeballing the sun

Galileo lost his sight

For truth, now all see

 

The light of reason

Till an unsolar wind blows

‘Alternative’ facts

 

Guttering candle

As encroaching darkness

Threatens extinction