On tour: Meet the author Claire Tomalin
Claire Tomalin is the author of Charles Dickens: A Life, Jane Austen: A Life, The Invisible Woman (all Penguin), and several other literary biographies. She will be appearing at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and in Melbourne in May.
What are you reading right now?
I always have several books on the go, so: Clive James’s wonderful poems Sentenced to Life (Picador), about squeezing every drop out of your last months. He is a real poet. Also re-reading Balzac’s Les Illusions Perdues (Lost Illusions), one of the classic accounts of a provincial young man trying to make it in the metropolis, Paris in this case (I like to keep up my French). I’ve just finished a proof of James Shapiro’s 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear (Faber). Shapiro is an outstanding textual scholar, notes every link between Shakespeare and possible sources of his inspiration, and brings London under James I to life.
What are you planning to read next?
Andrew Roberts’s fat new biography of Napoleon (Napoleon the Great, Penguin) looks like a good read for the flight.
Which book do you always recommend?
Two classic novels, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and Trollope’s Phineas Finn—both Dickens contemporaries who did things very differently and very well.
What was the defining book of your childhood?
The historian J E Neale’s Queen Elizabeth, published in 1934, was my favourite book from the age of 12 when I bought my copy, which I still have. It inspired me with a passionate interest in history and in great women who lead difficult lives.
If you were a literary character you’d be …
How about Queen Elizabeth? The first, of course.
What’s your favourite book adaptation (film, television or theatre)?
I’m not mad about adaptations for screen—the word is what I like best. But of course I love Ralph Fiennes as Dickens in the film of my book, The Invisible Woman, which he directed. He makes you feel you are seeing the man as he was: good, bad and irresistible.
What’s your favourite books website or blog?
I did set up my own website but I am hopeless about keeping it up to date, and I don’t follow any blogs.
Hardback, paperback or digital?
All three.
Facebook or Twitter?
I keep up with my children on Facebook but don’t contribute to it. Twitter, no thank you.
In 50 years’ time books will be …
Read, valued and loved.
Category: Features
