Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalinis an English author and journalist, known for her biographies on Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth20 June 1933
people regularly since
I think people are always saying things are 'over.' Fiction has been regularly 'over' since the 19th century.
bad choosing equally models novels offensive people poems vulgar
People who attack biography choose as their models vulgar and offensive biography. You could equally attack novels or poems by choosing bad poems or novels.
people tolerant understanding
You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.
people remember quiet
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.
people closest written
All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends.
people behave
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.
love normal people quite
I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs.
history interested people present relate trying understand
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.
life
I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in my real life.
badly behaved economic hope life position power
I've behaved badly in my life. I hope I haven't behaved as badly as Dickens! In a way, if you're a woman, you're not in a position to behave as badly, because you don't have the economic power.
The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.
achieved childhood children country house men might older rather regret romantic saw six spent suppose vision
Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it.
far films invent lives nature novels plots subjects whereas
Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.
evidence signs
Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.