· The Basics. Gather together as many official documents as you can. These might include death, marriage and birth certificates; census returns; wills; divorce records and details of service in the armed forces. The Family Records Centre in London, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' family history centres and many county record offices and larger public libraries (which often have family or local history specialists) are all good places from which to start your search. Although official documents aren't infallible they will provide you with key dates on which to build.
· Draw up a family tree. Include as much basic information as you can: first names, dates of births, deaths and marriages, professions and causes of death. Pin it up where you can study it and add question marks if you're unsure of information. As your knowledge grows so will the family tree and you will have a clearer idea of the point at which to begin your biography or family history. Trends and questions will also emerge. If you're writing a biography of a music hall star and several of her relatives married jockeys perhaps you need to explore the connections between the two ways of earning a living? Or maybe several members of your family died from a similar disease - was this hereditary or caused by a life working down the mines?
· Start a timeline. Include dates from the family tree and expand it so that it covers the period you will be writing about. Compile it on a computer so you can easily add new events as your research progresses; include both minor dates such as when they started university or school as well as bigger events - for example, when they were arrested for chaining themselves to the railings in support of votes for women. If you're researching a particularly dramatic moment - perhaps when the Titanic sank with your grandfather on board - you may want to add hour-by-hour details.
· Know your competition. Read similar books so that you can tell a publisher why your biography will be different. Pay particular attention to the footnotes and "notes on sources". Photocopy the bibliography and work your way through it.
· Contact family members. If your subject has any surviving family members you are going to have to be very, very nice to them. They may be able to provide valuable information and you will probably need their approval to quote from letters or diaries or to reproduce photos. They, however, may be suspicious of someone nosing around their family. Write them a reassuring letter and ask if you can visit them. Timing is crucial: you should have learnt enough about the subject to make the meeting worthwhile, but don't leave it too long to interview someone in their 90s.
· Befriend an expert. No matter what your subject, the chances are someone will already have studied it - perhaps for years. This needn't be bad news. Many archivists and local or specialist historians are keen to share their enthusiasm and will provide valuable "leads" - who to interview and which archives to use. Special interest groups such as Researching Far East Prisoners of War (researchingfepowhistory.org.uk/) can also put you in touch with useful contacts.
· Start your own journal. Research is as much - if not more - fun than writing a biography or family history and you might decide to weave a sense of this drama into your book. How did it feel to lay a wreath on your grandfather's grave at Passchendaele or to meet the last descendant of the famous woman whose life you want to write? You can also use the journal to speculate, or to remind yourself to follow up leads: "Was Maud having an affair with Thomas?", "Why did Gosia leave Poland?", "Visit Jewish Museum".
On the coalface
Despite the importance of the internet there is still nothing quite like the thrill of consulting an original document. Primary sources offer vital clues to how someone was feeling when they wrote their diary or letter. The crossings out, jottings in the margins, the pressure of their pen or pencil on the paper, the red rose preserved between the pages of a journal have all disappeared in an electronic age.
Before you visit an archive try to establish in advance exactly what material it contains. Many have leaflets to help you navigate your way around their collection - for example the National Archives has research guides on subjects ranging from "hedgerows" to "Ireland: the Easter Rising 1916". Don't just turn up at the library or collection in case it is closed for its annual stock take, or you need an appointment.
Ensure that your notes will be legible in a few years' time and that you know where to find a certain fact. This is particularly important if you decide to include footnotes. Record each piece of information and where it came from. You can buy a software package but a card index system works just as well. Remember to cross-reference topics. If you're writing about the first person to open a curry house in Britain you might have a card index on "curry house menu" cross-referenced to "general diet - Britain" to allow you to compare the dishes served in the restaurant with what most Britons were eating.
Source materials don't have to be dusty sheets of yellowing paper; people leave behind traces of themselves in a whole range of media. Old cine film will give you an idea how someone moved and how they related to other people. Many researchers find that they only really connect with their subject when they hear them speak - albeit against the hiss of an early sound recording - or catch a glimpse of them moving. The British Sound Archive has a wide selection of famous and not so famous voices.
Most biographers make pilgrimages to places that were significant to their subject. Antonia Fraser describes this as "optical research" and says it as valuable as hours spent in archives. While she was researching both Charles II and the gunpowder plot she crammed herself into hidey holes constructed for forbidden Catholic priests so that she could experience something of what they went through.
Bear in mind that a place may have changed dramatically. If your grandmother was a sales assistant in Peter Jones department store in London's Sloane Square don't assume that she worked in today's majestic glass-fronted shop. The modern frontage didn't appear until 1934 and your grandmother might have been used to the fussy Victorian building that preceded it.
Photos can provide visual prompts for your story. Sebastian Junger uses a photo taken in 1963 of himself as a baby perched on his mother's lap with two workmen behind them as the starting point for his book, A Death in Belmont. One of the men is Albert DeSalvo who later confessed to being the Boston Strangler - but did his crimes include the brutal murder of Junger's neighbour, Bessie Goldberg? The author re-examines the evidence in a way that makes the book part whodunit and part social history.
You can view thousands of images online at archives such as Hulton Getty, the Mary Evans Picture Library and the Imperial War Museum. Many collections, including the Science Museum and National Archives, include rare photos. The bigger agencies usually charge high fees for using their images and it's much cheaper if you can persuade family members or other people you interview to let you copy their photos. You are also more likely to find original images this way.
Maps, diagrams, drawings, extracts from magazines or documents can be as visually arresting as photos. Guy Fawkes's two signatures - before and after torture - show more vividly than a description of his physical appearance how the ordeal affected him. The earlier signature is strong and firm, whereas the second is weak and tremulous.
Getting to know the period
Immersing yourself in a period will help you to understand the context to your subject's life, their achievement and the difficulties they faced.
· Find a good biography of someone similar or of a prominent person of the day.
· Buy a general history of the period or topic.
· Read what your subject would have read. Study newspapers and magazines; look carefully at the adverts to see what people were eating and wearing. Read the popular novels and non-fiction of the period.
· Watch the films they would have seen: scan the TV listings for old movies or rent them on DVD.
· Listen to the music that was popular at the time. This will give you clues as to what people wore and how they moved (it would be difficult to Charleston in a crinoline).
Max Arthur on interviewing techniques
The basic rules of interview etiquette are dictated by common sense and courtesy. For example, it is important to be prompt.
Make sure your interviewee has understood in advance that you will be recording the interview, and take plenty of time to chat before you launch into the recording.
It's crucial to a good interview that your subject maintains confidence in you, and nothing diminishes that as quickly as a technical malfunction. Ensure that you have a high quality tape recorder or DAT machine, plenty of spare discs, a decent microphone and headphones, and check your equipment obsessively before you leave home.
Once the recording starts, make sure you've done your homework and can chat around the subject. Don't forget that you may well be the first person to whom they've told their story - a story that can sometimes be very painful for them to recall.
If you need to prompt them, make sure you ask open, not closed questions. For instance: "So, you were 18 when you went out to Spain?" may simply garner the answer, "Yes".
When interviewing people who are very old (the oldest I have interviewed was 110) you need to get in very close, and speak into whichever ear they feel is the stronger.
Once you've finished the interview and transcribed it, send them a copy: ask if there is anything they would like deleted in retrospect and, indeed, anything they would like to add. From experience, most do. Always remember you are recording history.
· Max Arthur's most recent book is Lest We Forget: Forgotten Voices
Kathryn Hughes on how to find your way through the archives
When visiting a new (to you) archive, it's essential to develop an attitude that is both open and focussed. You don't want to be so certain of what you've come to find that you block out an important discovery which comes at you from left field. Nor, though, do you want to waste ages sifting through material that has no relevance. I go in with a series of questions written down - Why was he named after his uncle? Why was she buried 400 miles from home? - and try methodically to find the answers.
Since I'm both a fast touch-typist and physically chaotic, it makes sense to take all my notes on an ultra-portable laptop. But, whether you type or write, it's essential to make a clear record of which document you're using. Its description (or "descriptor" in archivese) - Letters from the Earl of Pembroke to his Son - is far less important than the anonymous designation, which will be something like PT/Pem: 2, 50 DQ. It may not trip off the tongue, but it means you can identify the material easily if you need to check a detail several years later.
Do remember that the librarians and archivists who watch over this material are your best friends, so it pays to be nice to them. They'll be able to point you to the salient document within moments. Just don't expect them to take a personal interest in your research. I get embarrassed when I see punters boring on for Britain about their work to a librarian who is obviously itching to get on with her never-ending To Do list.
As for all those dreary rules about only using pencil and leaving your handbag in the cloakroom - sometimes I wonder why they don't insist on nude note-taking, just to ensure that you're not trying to smuggle out documents in your pants. .
· Kathryn Hughes' latest book is The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton
Write 500 words about your first name. Why did your parents choose it; is it a name that's been in your family for generations; were you named after anyone? Do you have any nicknames and do different people call you by different names - if so, how does each variation make you feel?
Exercise: taste, smell and sound
Answer the following questions in relation to your subject and the period in which they lived:
· What did it taste like? Tiffin or tandoori chicken?
· What did it smell like? The frangipani of Singapore or the burnt sugar of York?
· What did it sound like? Street vendors of Jaipur or organ grinders of Whitechapel?
· What did your subject read? Penny dreadfuls or Married Love by Marie Stopes?
· What did they wear? A flapper's dress or a twinset and pearls?
· How did they relax on a Saturday night? Embroidery or rolling back the carpet to dance to ragtime?
Draw up a timeline of the major events of the period you're writing about and put it in a file side by side with the timeline for the key happenings in your subject's life (see above). Include in this second timeline events in the wider world - this might be the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the Beatles performing their first gig, the election of a new prime minister.