'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. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
“Poor Nelly, she was not to know that fashions in sin change as much as other fashions.” — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I continually get more information about a subject after the book has been published. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
I was working at the 'Evening Standard' when I heard that there was a job going as deputy literary editor on the 'New Statesman.'… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
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… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
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… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them. — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
Dickens never joined a political party nor put forward a political programme. He was a writer who rightly saw his power as coming through… — Claire Tomalin Copy Share Image
