Great writing can be a beacon in the fog for a writer in the middle of their own book, even if the subjects are very different. As I wrote The Invisible History, I would sometimes stumble on a great idea or canny manoeuvre in a newspaper article. Sometimes writers influenced me because I already knew of their work and I knew them to be good at what they do. Others, I intentionally sought out – I wanted to see how they solved the kinds of problems I was facing. How do you move from the fine-grain of a story to the coarse and back again – from the description of a single document to the arc of history? Read More at Readings