TODAY WE HONOR THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM TYNDALE (1494-1536), martyred on this day, 6 October 1536. Outlaw to church and state, he was put to...

THOMAS WOLFE was born October 3, 1900 in Asheville, North Carolina. Appetite is a word often associated with this writer. He "bolted"...

"To unlock the heart is to know its secrets, or as close as we may come, to hear its soft inner voice, a thing love alone can achieve,

THAT I HAD NEVER WRITTEN biography before didn't stop me. I bolted into the writing. Saturated for years in Elizabethan and Jacobean culture, reading widely, closely, and with appetite, I developed a good "ear" for the age, that is, for investigation, historical forensics, knowing which rocks to look under, who to listen to and who to avoid, how to balance imagination and scholarship, following what cues there were. The point I am attempting to make is that at once I found my

MY FONDNESS FOR MAY borders on idolatry. I admit that. Her touch is a breeze of sunlight. Her laughter, the pelt of a rose. That it is my...