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
later music nobody passages poetry prose radio tells time
'Words and Music' on Radio 3 is always a treat. Actors read passages of poetry and prose interspersed with music, and nobody tells you what it is. Later you can look it up online, but at the time you can't cheat.
adopt obliged writers
Writers often feel obliged to adopt some sort of public appearance.
shakespeare
Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.
dickens great multiple
After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.
dickens sons
Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.
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.
directed good shut towards trying writers
Writers don't make good spouses. When I am writing, I'm not a good wife. I shut myself away, and all my emotions are directed towards what I'm trying to write.
charles
Writing Charles Dickens' biography is like writing five biographies.