C. Day-Lewis: An English Literary Life by Sean Day-Lewis (1980)

This biography is remarkable for the fact that it is a family piece - a son's biography of his father. Day-Lewis says in his introduction that he was warned off it as an enterprise, because of the heroism/destruction dualism of many father/son relationships, at least from a psychologist's point of view. But I think the results speak for themselves: it is a portrait from the inside (at least to some extent) and therefore has a unique message. There is a sense throughout it of insight, of febrile knowledge tingling close to the source, which is invaluable. Day-Lewis is a sympathetic biographer without being in any sense hagiographic. He is quite happy to intensely document, for example, the adverse reaction to his father's work in the last 10 or so years of his life in many quarters, but also to reveal quite objectively where he thought that was governed by malice rather than insight. Every now and then one gets a sense of being too close to some subject which pinches, where the author reveals a peculiar reaction to some event which still obviously hurts or confuses. But the very few of those are more than balanced by a simple and straightforward prose style and its contrastingly rich and moving portrait.