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
adored baby both cambridge clothes crying delightful football full grey handsome husband machines men morning park playing sunday three vivid washing
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 my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the delightful young men who had been friends to both of us at Cambridge three years earlier.
bad behaviour dickens faithfully love man present shock trying
When you live with Dickens for years, reading him and trying to present him as faithfully as you can, you can't fail to love the man - so the shock of his bad behaviour is considerable, even when you know it is coming.
choose curious experience human popular programmed
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 experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading.
dealing feeling god subject
When dealing with a subject who is dead, you have this feeling of being God. You know who they're going to marry, when they're going to die. It's strange to feel so omniscient.
greatest growing head interested life pleasure poetry time
Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all the time. I still think the very greatest pleasure in life is to write a poem.
dench everybody flawless gave pleased thoroughly
'Philomena' was even better than I had expected. I was so pleased to see the evil Irish nuns thoroughly exposed, and I thought Judi Dench gave a flawless performance, as did everybody else.
It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child.
life
I would like to have a more social life than I have.
broader covering historians range sources spectrum time wider
Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time, peoples.
christmas dickens emerged
Dickens was a part of how the whole celebration of Christmas as we know it today emerged during the 19th century.
human
Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.
felt whom
It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration.
love shakespeare
I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 12, and I read the whole works. Yes, I was precocious.
life series sort
My life was a sort of series of random disasters.