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 →
I would like to have a more social life than I have.
I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people.
I'm interested in history, in trying to relate the past to the present and to understand how people thought about their problems and pleasures.
I'm usually convinced that what I'm working on is a total disaster.
In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.
It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration.
Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.
My life was a sort of series of random disasters.
Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.
The book doesn't end when you finish writing it.
The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.
The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny.
When I kept a diary, I realised that it was all moanings and depression, and I think that is quite common.
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.