Claire Tomalin (born Claire Delavenay on 20 June 1933) is an English author and journalist, known for her biographies on Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Read full biography of Claire Tomalin →
One of my most vivid memories of the mid-1950s is of crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while... →
As he approached his 28th birthday in February 1840, Dickens knew himself to be famous, successful and tired. He needed a rest, and he made up his... →
Everyone finds their own version of Charles Dickens. The child-victim, the irrepressibly ambitious young man, the reporter, the demonic worker, the... →
I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again.
The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches... →
Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to... →
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.
By the time I went up to Cambridge, I was extremely quiet and well behaved, although I now meet people who remember me as not like that at all.
Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.
Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time, peoples.
I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 12, and I read the whole works. Yes, I was precocious.
I have been left-wing always, from childhood.
It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child.
Claire Tomalin (born Claire Delavenay on 20 June 1933) is an English author and journalist, known for her biographies on Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft.