All the stories in this collection address a subject that has become more topical with time - the urge to delve into the private lives of celebrities. James' celebrities are mostly writers with one story featuring instead a painter. In every story the narrator is endeavouring to enter the private life of a revered artist. On the premise that to know more about the maker would be to understand the art better. As if an artist's inspirations will always be ciphered into his private life. The rigidly compartmentalised James doesn't believe this for a moment. In fact every story is a kind of parable of what a misleading notion this is. None of his budding detectives emerge unscathed. James argues this act of snooping, of seeking more than is readily given, acts not so much as a magnifying glass on the art as frosted glass, distorting what it reveals. He would have loved quantum theory and Roland Barthes. The most fascinating trick of obsessive fandom - the self-aggrandising prestige people often seek to steal through sidling up to celebrities - he only touches on.

I realised while reading these stories that lots of my favourite writers relished the romance of being a writer. Woolf, Mansfield, Fitzgerald, Shelley, Byron. They were the rock stars of their day. And my love of them has been enhanced by knowing about their private lives. On the other hand there is the more private self-effacing kind of writer - Austen, Nabokov, Spark, DeLillo and James himself. The prefaces Henry James wrote to his novels, supposedly written to shed light, are often like little comedies of mischievous obfuscation. In his novels he often makes it as hard to understand what he means as he can. Personally I don't share Henry James' distaste for intimate biographical detail. Though I'd agree that how much this contributes to our understanding of the artist's work is probably minimal. Elena Ferrante drew attention in the limelight to the anonymity of the artist with regards her art. Hiding her identity to the point where some even believed she might be a man. Did it matter with regards our understanding of her work. Not at all. So Henry James is right. But is our desire to know who she is unhealthy? I don't think so. I know if someone I knew possessed a secret stash of Katherine Mansfield's letters I'd go to great lengths to sneak a peek at them. So I'd be one of Henry James' morbid misguided snoopers. Curiosity might kill the cat but it's no less inspiring to the archaeologist, the astronomer and the lover than it is to the fan.