Comparing his life and Stuart's, he says, impeccably well-spoken, 'we're absolute polar opposites in terms of ease of upbringing'. We experiment in tracing Masters' existence backwards, from book to birth, but his ordered life somehow resists, so we bow to chronology and work forwards instead. We were very pleased that we could go to each other's launch parties.' 'I was visiting my mother at her house in Oxford when the news came out. 'It was completely accidental,' Masters assures me. A twist of timing led to the book being published on the very same day as Masters' mother, the author Joan Brady, brought out her latest book, a publishing 'first' that meant a great deal of publicity for both of them. He didn't expect the applause to be as long or loud as it has been, but unpredictability is forever rearing its head in this story. 'You have to be grateful if you get any claps'. 'Writing is a form of entertainment' says Masters, sipping a glass of wine and contemplating his success so far. In spite of its frequently harrowing nature, what distinguishes this biography and has delighted critics is its humour. Whether his death was suicide or an accident remains - like so much of this remarkable story - an open question. Stuart never saw the final product he was killed by a train in 2002. Told in reverse, Stuart: A Life Backwards traces the frenetic spiral of Stuart's existence, back through homelessness, prison and drug-addiction to a horrifyingly abusive childhood, in luminous prose. Masters would spend the next four years wrestling with this homeless man's chaotic life-story, eventually shaping it into an extraordinarily powerful biography which chronicles not only a life but the inherent difficulties of trying to write a life.

It's here that I meet Alexander Masters and it is here, in 1998, that Masters first met Stuart Shorter, crouched in a doorway near Sidney Sussex College, threatening to kill himself. Cambridge is covered in soft drizzle, emptied of students, filled with tourists, bells chiming six o'clock.

Alexander masters stuart