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A Life of My Own: A Memoir
Esteemed biographer and legendary literary editor Claire Tomalin's stunning memoir of a life in literature“[An] intelligent and humane book…There is genuine appeal in watching this indomitable woman continue to chase the next draft of herself." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
In A Life of My Own, the renowned biographer of Charles Dickens, Samuel Pepys, and Thomas Hardy, and former literary editor for the Sunday Times reflects on a remarkable life surrounded by writers and books. From discovering books as a form of escapism during her parents' difficult divorce, to pursuing poetry at Cambridge, where she meets and marries Nicholas Tomalin, the ambitious and striving journalist, Tomalin always steered herself towards a passionate involvement with art. She relives the glittering London literary scene of the 1960s, during which Tomalin endured her husband's constant philandering and numerous affairs, and revisits the satisfaction of being commissioned to write her first book, a biography of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. In biography, she found her vocation. However, when Nick is killed in 1973 while reporting in Israel, the mother of four put aside her writing to assume the position of literary editor of the New Statesman. Her career soared when she later moved to the Sunday Times, and she tells with dazzling candor of this time in her life spent working alongside the literary lights of 1970s London. But, the pain of her young daughter's suicide and the challenges of caring for her disabled son as a single mother test Claire's strength and persistence. It is not until later in life that she is able to return to what gave her such purpose decades ago, writing biographies, and finds enduring love with her now-husband, playwright Michael Frayn. Marked by honesty, humility, and grace, rendered in the most elegant of prose, A Life of My Own is a portrait of a life, replete with joy and heartbreak. With quiet insight and unsparing clarity, Tomalin writes autobiography at its most luminous, delivering an astonishing and emotionally-taut masterpiece.
351 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 7, 2017
226 people are currently reading
2866 people want to read
About the author
Claire Tomalin
31 books411 followersBorn Claire Delavenay in London, she was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge.
She became literary editor of the 'New Statesman' and also the 'Sunday Times'. She has written several noted biographies and her work has been recognised with the award of the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1991 Hawthornden Prize for 'The Invisible Woman The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens'.
In addition, her biography of Samuel Pepys won the Whitbread Book Award in 2002, the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 2003, the Latham Prize of the Samuel Pepys Club in 2003, and was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2003.
She married her first husband, Nicholas Tomalin, who was a prominent journalist but who was killed in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War in 1973. Her second husband is the novelist and playwright Michael Frayn.
She is Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English PEN (International PEN).
She became literary editor of the 'New Statesman' and also the 'Sunday Times'. She has written several noted biographies and her work has been recognised with the award of the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1991 Hawthornden Prize for 'The Invisible Woman The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens'.
In addition, her biography of Samuel Pepys won the Whitbread Book Award in 2002, the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 2003, the Latham Prize of the Samuel Pepys Club in 2003, and was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2003.
She married her first husband, Nicholas Tomalin, who was a prominent journalist but who was killed in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War in 1973. Her second husband is the novelist and playwright Michael Frayn.
She is Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English PEN (International PEN).
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August 21, 2018
Thank you to Penguin Publishing Group who provided an advance reader copy via Edelweiss.
My love of biographies that take place in England led me to this autobiography by author Claire Tomalin. I knew nothing of her existence previously, but was frankly lured in by her cover photo and the title of the book.
My observations of Ms. Tomalin are that of a very intelligent, talented, confident and fiercely strong woman. She is now in her early eighties, but recounts quite thoroughly and beautifully a very full life from her parents' marital union up to the present. She is the daughter of a French writer (father Emile) and a British composer (mother Muriel). Claire graduated from Cambridge University with an English degree, and set about a literary career which was quite varied and fruitful.
My favorite parts of the book were the "human" parts where she spoke of her romances, marriages, affairs and children. I loved reading about the house she and her husband purchased, which Claire lived in for forty years. Her memories of the neighborhood, its people and surroundings were quite enchanting passages to read, and I savored these. I also enjoyed reading about her less than perfect marriage to prominent journalist Nicholas Tomalin, her first husband. Together they had five children, although two met tragic ends and one was born with a physical disability. As I read this book, I marveled at this woman's strength in the face of unexpected losses, and her endless push to flourish in her journalistic career. Despite the chaos of what was happening in her personal life, she kept moving forward through literary jobs and book projects. She kept diaries throughout the decades which were crucial to recalling what's been a remarkable life.
Although Claire has been literary editor on papers such as the Sunday Times, her first love is writing books. She was finally able to be a full-time author later in life. Ms. Tomalin has written thoroughly researched and successful biographies of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, among others. Her methods of research in preparation for writing biographies were laid bare, such as literally walking in the footsteps of her subjects.
In summation, it was a pleasure reading this autobiography because of the fine writing style and interesting subject matter. Like some other biographies I've read where I know a lot about the subject already, I knew nothing about Claire Tomalin and found it a refreshing and interesting read. I wasn't always interested in the nuts and bolts of the lives of some of the biographies she was authoring, but I glossed over these and found the main subject of this autobiography fascinating in her own right.
My love of biographies that take place in England led me to this autobiography by author Claire Tomalin. I knew nothing of her existence previously, but was frankly lured in by her cover photo and the title of the book.
My observations of Ms. Tomalin are that of a very intelligent, talented, confident and fiercely strong woman. She is now in her early eighties, but recounts quite thoroughly and beautifully a very full life from her parents' marital union up to the present. She is the daughter of a French writer (father Emile) and a British composer (mother Muriel). Claire graduated from Cambridge University with an English degree, and set about a literary career which was quite varied and fruitful.
My favorite parts of the book were the "human" parts where she spoke of her romances, marriages, affairs and children. I loved reading about the house she and her husband purchased, which Claire lived in for forty years. Her memories of the neighborhood, its people and surroundings were quite enchanting passages to read, and I savored these. I also enjoyed reading about her less than perfect marriage to prominent journalist Nicholas Tomalin, her first husband. Together they had five children, although two met tragic ends and one was born with a physical disability. As I read this book, I marveled at this woman's strength in the face of unexpected losses, and her endless push to flourish in her journalistic career. Despite the chaos of what was happening in her personal life, she kept moving forward through literary jobs and book projects. She kept diaries throughout the decades which were crucial to recalling what's been a remarkable life.
Although Claire has been literary editor on papers such as the Sunday Times, her first love is writing books. She was finally able to be a full-time author later in life. Ms. Tomalin has written thoroughly researched and successful biographies of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, among others. Her methods of research in preparation for writing biographies were laid bare, such as literally walking in the footsteps of her subjects.
In summation, it was a pleasure reading this autobiography because of the fine writing style and interesting subject matter. Like some other biographies I've read where I know a lot about the subject already, I knew nothing about Claire Tomalin and found it a refreshing and interesting read. I wasn't always interested in the nuts and bolts of the lives of some of the biographies she was authoring, but I glossed over these and found the main subject of this autobiography fascinating in her own right.
September 28, 2017
Tomalin is known as a biographer of literary figures including Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. [I’ve read these last two, and have three of her previous books on the shelf.] I therefore expected that her own life story would have more to say about the biographer’s craft. Instead, this is a fairly straightforward – if sometimes restrained – autobiography ideal for readers of Diana Athill, David Lodge and John Carey (thinking specifically of the life stories all three have written in their eighties).
It’s especially revealing about the social and cultural history of the earlier decades her life covers: her French father’s socialist atheism, her mother’s leaning towards Christian Science, the upheaval of the war years, the bitterness and practical difficulties of her parents’ divorce, and the seeping of sexual freedom during her university days. I found the chapters on Tomalin’s schooling rather boring, but things pick up as she gets her Cambridge degree and marries Nicholas, who was the Labour president of the Student’s Union and edited Granta, which was then just a student magazine.
They lived in Greenwich and Tomalin had her hands full with part-time work for publishers and newspapers as well as raising their four children (one disabled with spina bifida). There were some jaw-dropping tragedies to come, but Tomalin is strangely matter-of-fact and unemotional about them all. Childbirth, losing a baby, breaking off an affair – she’s almost robotic in her recounting. I think this is reflective of her age and upbringing: it’s a very English attitude to simply state what happened but not draw attention to yourself for it. We might hear how she thought or reacted at the time, but I’m not sure we ever get a real sense of how she felt, especially about her multiple bereavements. In her introduction she refers to this as “moving between the trivial and the tragic in a way that could seem callous” in her attempt “to be as truthful as possible.”
So this is not a tell-all in any way; most will already know about Nicholas Tomalin’s death in 1973 in Israel while reporting for the Sunday Times, and I daresay her affair with Martin Amis, her deputy when she was the literary editor of the New Statesman, was common knowledge at the time. She was a widow; he was unattached. The only reasons it might seem scandalous were that he was significantly younger and she was his boss. Tomalin also never divulges whether she and Michael Frayn were lovers as well as close family friends before his divorce came through.
I most enjoyed hearing about Tomalin’s career – working with John Fowles and J.G. Ballard manuscripts as a publisher’s assistant (she had orders to reduce Fowles’s The Magus by a quarter but the cut material was later restored); judging the Booker Prize and being on the Royal Literary Fund committee as an editor; finally finding her true vocation with the Wollstonecraft book – and the ways her life intersected with other famous names from the literary world: for instance, Christopher Reid was her son’s nanny, Julian Barnes was her deputy at the Sunday Times, and V.S. Pritchett, Beryl Bainbridge and Alan Bennett were all neighbors at one time or another.
It’s a dignified but slightly aloof book: less forthcoming than Athill, less warm than Carey, less informative on the work than Lodge. The glimpses of her working life were the best bits for me, and I was somewhat frustrated at her reticence elsewhere. Still, I can recommend this to anyone interested in spending some time in London’s world of letters in the second half of the twentieth century.
Some favorite lines:
“My story should be cheering to anyone who is finding it hard to establish a career they find congenial.”
“Reviewing is an education in itself. You learn from the books, and you have to order and condense your thoughts and capture the reader’s attention.”
“I once described working at home as ‘silence, hard slog, loneliness, old clothes’, which was only partly true. I did miss the feeling of perpetually renewed excitement, of belonging to a band of brothers and sisters who care about the same things – books, reviews, journals, who’s said what, who’s writing where. But research is not all done silently at home, and is not always lonely.”
“Working on a biography means you are obsessed with one person and one period for several years. Another life is bound up with yours and will remain so for the rest of your own life – that at least is my experience. You have gone in too deep to cast them aside.”
“as I progressed with my research I sometimes felt I was carrying so much information in my head that it was like a physical weight”
It’s especially revealing about the social and cultural history of the earlier decades her life covers: her French father’s socialist atheism, her mother’s leaning towards Christian Science, the upheaval of the war years, the bitterness and practical difficulties of her parents’ divorce, and the seeping of sexual freedom during her university days. I found the chapters on Tomalin’s schooling rather boring, but things pick up as she gets her Cambridge degree and marries Nicholas, who was the Labour president of the Student’s Union and edited Granta, which was then just a student magazine.
They lived in Greenwich and Tomalin had her hands full with part-time work for publishers and newspapers as well as raising their four children (one disabled with spina bifida). There were some jaw-dropping tragedies to come, but Tomalin is strangely matter-of-fact and unemotional about them all. Childbirth, losing a baby, breaking off an affair – she’s almost robotic in her recounting. I think this is reflective of her age and upbringing: it’s a very English attitude to simply state what happened but not draw attention to yourself for it. We might hear how she thought or reacted at the time, but I’m not sure we ever get a real sense of how she felt, especially about her multiple bereavements. In her introduction she refers to this as “moving between the trivial and the tragic in a way that could seem callous” in her attempt “to be as truthful as possible.”
So this is not a tell-all in any way; most will already know about Nicholas Tomalin’s death in 1973 in Israel while reporting for the Sunday Times, and I daresay her affair with Martin Amis, her deputy when she was the literary editor of the New Statesman, was common knowledge at the time. She was a widow; he was unattached. The only reasons it might seem scandalous were that he was significantly younger and she was his boss. Tomalin also never divulges whether she and Michael Frayn were lovers as well as close family friends before his divorce came through.
I most enjoyed hearing about Tomalin’s career – working with John Fowles and J.G. Ballard manuscripts as a publisher’s assistant (she had orders to reduce Fowles’s The Magus by a quarter but the cut material was later restored); judging the Booker Prize and being on the Royal Literary Fund committee as an editor; finally finding her true vocation with the Wollstonecraft book – and the ways her life intersected with other famous names from the literary world: for instance, Christopher Reid was her son’s nanny, Julian Barnes was her deputy at the Sunday Times, and V.S. Pritchett, Beryl Bainbridge and Alan Bennett were all neighbors at one time or another.
It’s a dignified but slightly aloof book: less forthcoming than Athill, less warm than Carey, less informative on the work than Lodge. The glimpses of her working life were the best bits for me, and I was somewhat frustrated at her reticence elsewhere. Still, I can recommend this to anyone interested in spending some time in London’s world of letters in the second half of the twentieth century.
Some favorite lines:
“My story should be cheering to anyone who is finding it hard to establish a career they find congenial.”
“Reviewing is an education in itself. You learn from the books, and you have to order and condense your thoughts and capture the reader’s attention.”
“I once described working at home as ‘silence, hard slog, loneliness, old clothes’, which was only partly true. I did miss the feeling of perpetually renewed excitement, of belonging to a band of brothers and sisters who care about the same things – books, reviews, journals, who’s said what, who’s writing where. But research is not all done silently at home, and is not always lonely.”
“Working on a biography means you are obsessed with one person and one period for several years. Another life is bound up with yours and will remain so for the rest of your own life – that at least is my experience. You have gone in too deep to cast them aside.”
“as I progressed with my research I sometimes felt I was carrying so much information in my head that it was like a physical weight”
September 20, 2017
Claire Tomalin was a name I recognised only from my days as a bookseller, her biographies of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and Charles Dickens: A Life were popular and well reviewed. I hadn't read anything of hers and probably wouldn't have been interested much in her life had I not happened to catch an interview with her talking about writing history and biography, particularly the sometime reaction to being female and attempting to write authoritative biographies of important men. Being immediately irritated by that notion, I had to find out more...
Thankfully, for the most part she seems to have been supported by both male and female friendships and connections (the literary name dropping in this is incredible and certainly makes a bit of a case for 'it's who you know' and where you went to university, as much as 'what you know'), as well as maximising her own intelligence and drive, to become a celebrated biographer and prizewinner. Her life has been challenging in parts, full of change, and is retold here with honesty and heart. Some how it doesn't quite reach the apparent heights of her other writing, the prose is basic, almost list-like at times, and while I know so much more about the events of her life now, I don't feel like I know her. Even so, I will definitely be reading one of her biographies soon.
Thankfully, for the most part she seems to have been supported by both male and female friendships and connections (the literary name dropping in this is incredible and certainly makes a bit of a case for 'it's who you know' and where you went to university, as much as 'what you know'), as well as maximising her own intelligence and drive, to become a celebrated biographer and prizewinner. Her life has been challenging in parts, full of change, and is retold here with honesty and heart. Some how it doesn't quite reach the apparent heights of her other writing, the prose is basic, almost list-like at times, and while I know so much more about the events of her life now, I don't feel like I know her. Even so, I will definitely be reading one of her biographies soon.
September 4, 2018
A Life of My Own is well-written and mostly interesting and definitely delivers what it promises. If you read the publisher's description and think it sounds like something you'd like, you'll probably like it.
February 1, 2018
I've read many of Tomalin's excellent biographies. I've also heard her speak about one of her books (Charles Dickens) at a Lake District Literary Festival. I could happily have listened to her for hours.
I did wonder about how you would go about writing your own life if you've been used to what must be a very different attitude in writing someone else's. So maybe it didn't surprise me that I often felt she was holding back.
Equally she has children who might well read their mother's book. How far do you go in detailing how their father, a philandering adulterer, was also physically violent to her?
Tomalin's very forgiving attitude towards him (we constantly hear about his charm and popularity) didn't always sit well with me when he yet again deserted her for some new fancy, leaving her to pick up the pieces.
She's a hugely strong and capable woman, facing tragedies that would floor many. I can't imagine how difficult it was to write the chapter about her daughter Susanna's rapid descent into depression and suicide. But I also didn't feel that writing this was cathartic in any way (as I have sometimes felt reading about other people's tragedies).
Tomalin has clearly found love, great peace and contentment with a very happy mid life marriage to Michael Frayn (a person who crops up here and there during her earlier life). There was definitely an air of smoothing over the circumstances that led them being together, probably once again to 'protect' their respective families.
Far too much name dropping, a rushed ending and a strong feeling that a lot of what a reader might have found really interesting was deliberately left out.
I did wonder about how you would go about writing your own life if you've been used to what must be a very different attitude in writing someone else's. So maybe it didn't surprise me that I often felt she was holding back.
Equally she has children who might well read their mother's book. How far do you go in detailing how their father, a philandering adulterer, was also physically violent to her?
Tomalin's very forgiving attitude towards him (we constantly hear about his charm and popularity) didn't always sit well with me when he yet again deserted her for some new fancy, leaving her to pick up the pieces.
She's a hugely strong and capable woman, facing tragedies that would floor many. I can't imagine how difficult it was to write the chapter about her daughter Susanna's rapid descent into depression and suicide. But I also didn't feel that writing this was cathartic in any way (as I have sometimes felt reading about other people's tragedies).
Tomalin has clearly found love, great peace and contentment with a very happy mid life marriage to Michael Frayn (a person who crops up here and there during her earlier life). There was definitely an air of smoothing over the circumstances that led them being together, probably once again to 'protect' their respective families.
Far too much name dropping, a rushed ending and a strong feeling that a lot of what a reader might have found really interesting was deliberately left out.
November 27, 2017
I bought a copy of this book as soon as it came out, but I only read it after seeing Tomalin at the Cambridge Literary Festival this past weekend (November 25). Some of the anecdotes and funny lines in the biography were touched on in her hour-long interview, but I was surprised to discover that the theme she returned to again and again - the difficulty of being a mother and having a career - is not more analysed in her writing. I took notes as she was speaking, and looking back at them I see that I have written down the following: on career vs. children, 'you want both, but it's quite difficult to have both'. On her mother, who was a talented pianist and composer: 'by choosing to have children, she dished herself as a composer'. And of the cataclysmic social changes of the 1960s: 'we thought in the 60s we were making it easier for women, but nothing makes it easier'. I don't know if the reader will end up agreeing, though, as Tomalin presents a life that has been stuffed full of achievement and accomplishment.
One of the most perceptive, and I think objective, comments Tomalin makes on her own life appears in the biography's 'Introductory Note': 'One thing I have learnt is that, while I used to think I was making individual choices, now, looking back, I see clearly I was following trends and general patterns of behaviour which I was about as powerless to resist as a migrating bird of a salmon swimming upstream'. One of these 'choices' was a very young marriage to Nick Tomalin who had been a friend at Cambridge. Their first child, daughter Jo, was born on Nick's 25th birthday in 1956. They were to have four more children together in a tumultuous marriage, before Nick died in 1973. (He was killed by a Syrian missile while driving in the Golan Heights.). Although Tomalin did bits and pieces of review work in her children's early years, it was not until her 40s (and after her husband's death) that she really began to work - as literary editor at the Statesman and then the Sunday Times - and also as a biographer. Her Mary Wollstonecraft was her first major biography, and published when she was 40.
Tomalin's early life was definitely not easy - her parents had a bitter divorce when she was very young, and for many years she was estranged from her father - but she doesn't dwell much on these scars. Both in the book and in her interview, she emphasised that her mother gave her important and lasting gifts: chiefly the unconditional love, 'which gives you strength all your life', but also the love of reading and music which proved not only to be emotionally sustaining, but also the source of so much pleasure. The biography is filled with references to the books and writers, songs and composers, which have been her lifelong companions.
There were three big tragedies in Tomalin's life, and they all happened within a decade. First, her youngest child and only son Tom was born with spinal bifida in 1970. Second, Nick's death. Third, her daughter Susanna's swift descent into depression and then suicide in 1980. Although Tomalin tends to keep a tight lid on her feelings - both in the biography, and one suspects, in real life - the chapter on Susanna's death was extremely upsetting to read, partly because one senses that Tomalin to some extent blames herself for not getting Susanna the help she needed.
The last three decades of Tomalin's life have been filled with work - it is, of course, her many biographies (Dickens, Hardy, Pepys, Jane Austen, Katherine Mansfield) which is she best-known for - and a marriage at age 60 to her longtime friend (and fellow writer) Michael Frayn. It was interesting to read her comments on the historical figures she has devoted so much time and research to, but by this point in the biography I felt she was really just skimming the surface. She is quite circumspect about describing the relationship with Frayn, which clearly had a difficult start as he was married at the time.
I read this biography with great interest, but I think that I connected to it far more having met her and listened to her. There was a detachment to it which probably says a lot about Tomalin's generation (she is now 84), but was somewhat unsatisfying to someone hoping for more emotional revelations and analysis. The interviewer tried to draw her on various sexist behaviours and attitudes that she had to contend with, but she was both dismissive and surprisingly insouciant about them. One gets the feeling that she has always been fiercely intelligent, ambitious and highly competent. If there was much anxiety or insecurity about her choices, she doesn't let on. But no matter how cool her approach, Tomalin's life is a fascinating piece of 20th century British social and literary culture.
One of the most perceptive, and I think objective, comments Tomalin makes on her own life appears in the biography's 'Introductory Note': 'One thing I have learnt is that, while I used to think I was making individual choices, now, looking back, I see clearly I was following trends and general patterns of behaviour which I was about as powerless to resist as a migrating bird of a salmon swimming upstream'. One of these 'choices' was a very young marriage to Nick Tomalin who had been a friend at Cambridge. Their first child, daughter Jo, was born on Nick's 25th birthday in 1956. They were to have four more children together in a tumultuous marriage, before Nick died in 1973. (He was killed by a Syrian missile while driving in the Golan Heights.). Although Tomalin did bits and pieces of review work in her children's early years, it was not until her 40s (and after her husband's death) that she really began to work - as literary editor at the Statesman and then the Sunday Times - and also as a biographer. Her Mary Wollstonecraft was her first major biography, and published when she was 40.
Tomalin's early life was definitely not easy - her parents had a bitter divorce when she was very young, and for many years she was estranged from her father - but she doesn't dwell much on these scars. Both in the book and in her interview, she emphasised that her mother gave her important and lasting gifts: chiefly the unconditional love, 'which gives you strength all your life', but also the love of reading and music which proved not only to be emotionally sustaining, but also the source of so much pleasure. The biography is filled with references to the books and writers, songs and composers, which have been her lifelong companions.
There were three big tragedies in Tomalin's life, and they all happened within a decade. First, her youngest child and only son Tom was born with spinal bifida in 1970. Second, Nick's death. Third, her daughter Susanna's swift descent into depression and then suicide in 1980. Although Tomalin tends to keep a tight lid on her feelings - both in the biography, and one suspects, in real life - the chapter on Susanna's death was extremely upsetting to read, partly because one senses that Tomalin to some extent blames herself for not getting Susanna the help she needed.
The last three decades of Tomalin's life have been filled with work - it is, of course, her many biographies (Dickens, Hardy, Pepys, Jane Austen, Katherine Mansfield) which is she best-known for - and a marriage at age 60 to her longtime friend (and fellow writer) Michael Frayn. It was interesting to read her comments on the historical figures she has devoted so much time and research to, but by this point in the biography I felt she was really just skimming the surface. She is quite circumspect about describing the relationship with Frayn, which clearly had a difficult start as he was married at the time.
I read this biography with great interest, but I think that I connected to it far more having met her and listened to her. There was a detachment to it which probably says a lot about Tomalin's generation (she is now 84), but was somewhat unsatisfying to someone hoping for more emotional revelations and analysis. The interviewer tried to draw her on various sexist behaviours and attitudes that she had to contend with, but she was both dismissive and surprisingly insouciant about them. One gets the feeling that she has always been fiercely intelligent, ambitious and highly competent. If there was much anxiety or insecurity about her choices, she doesn't let on. But no matter how cool her approach, Tomalin's life is a fascinating piece of 20th century British social and literary culture.
September 12, 2018
I think Tomalin is the first biographer I started reading because she wrote it rather than because I was interested in the subject.
This is a fascinating book because she is in many ways an ordinary person, not the kind of person biographies are written about, and yet her ordinary life is (like all our lives) in many ways extraordinary. She turns her clear critical but sympathetic eye on herself, her parents, her choices, in the same way she does on Pepys and Austen -- and the result is excellent.
This is a fascinating book because she is in many ways an ordinary person, not the kind of person biographies are written about, and yet her ordinary life is (like all our lives) in many ways extraordinary. She turns her clear critical but sympathetic eye on herself, her parents, her choices, in the same way she does on Pepys and Austen -- and the result is excellent.
December 2, 2018
A friend of mine recommended this to me and I was surprised at how boring I found it to be. Tomalin has led a fascinating life but she does not write about it in particularly engaging ways. I mostly found that it seemed rushed--like she had a task for herself, to get from point A to point B. Even when talking about the deaths of her husband and son and daughter, there is a great deal of detail about who she called, who dropped by to offer condolences, etc. And the endless detail about all her neighbors on Gloucester Crescent was mind-numbing after a while. I don't care that the Mellys moved out and Tom and Ruth moved in, or whoever they were. Unless you already know who these people are--and Tomalin certainly doesn't tell us--these details are not inherently interesting; they're just long lists of names.
December 14, 2018
Claire Tomalin is a well-known, British author and literary editor who has written biographies of Charles Dickens, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy, Dicken’s mistress, Nelly Ternan (made into a film starring Kirsten Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes), Katherine Mansfield, and more. In other words, she had a lot of experience in writing compelling biographies before tackling her own. Because she’s had an exceptional life, full of tragedy, money problems, WWII, family strife, and famous friends and acquaintances, the book gallops off with you. She writes with considerable honesty and vulnerability. Many writers get hung up on writing about themselves. They come off as stiff, shy, or as braggarts, but Tomalin makes you feel like she’s sitting by the fire chatting with you.
February 21, 2018
I like this autobiography because it is as much about Tomalin's life as it is about books and writers. Any writer worth his name, both contemporary and historic, are mentioned– from John Donne to Philip Roth. There are countless names of journalists, London writers that appear in the book. Since she has worked for various big publications, she writes the insider story; internal politics, court-cases, scoops and so forth.
Throughout the book, I feel that this autobiography is quite selective in what it tells. She remains conscious of her image. There are not too many human moments– by which I mean we often make mistakes and feel terrible about things. In this sense, she is very distanced, reserved and controlled. I wonder if this has anything to do with her being a literary editor. She edited too much of life, and this probably has flagged my interest and made me skip pages.
There is too much name-dropping in the book – which is at once amusing and annoying– not only of established writers (which I like) but also of their descendants– for example, I met Jane Austen's brother's great-grandson. While I enjoy reading about authors, their whims and lifestyles; I also crave for more. She hardly wrote about books, nor did she give opinions on them except once where she mentioned what she thought of Lawrence. Since her life revolved so much around literature, art and writers, I expected more from her. It is not satisfying to read that Philip Roth is a great writer.
In many sections of the book, I expected better language especially knowing her background. Toward the end, I felt a mild change in regards to language which I enjoyed.
Throughout the book, I feel that this autobiography is quite selective in what it tells. She remains conscious of her image. There are not too many human moments– by which I mean we often make mistakes and feel terrible about things. In this sense, she is very distanced, reserved and controlled. I wonder if this has anything to do with her being a literary editor. She edited too much of life, and this probably has flagged my interest and made me skip pages.
There is too much name-dropping in the book – which is at once amusing and annoying– not only of established writers (which I like) but also of their descendants– for example, I met Jane Austen's brother's great-grandson. While I enjoy reading about authors, their whims and lifestyles; I also crave for more. She hardly wrote about books, nor did she give opinions on them except once where she mentioned what she thought of Lawrence. Since her life revolved so much around literature, art and writers, I expected more from her. It is not satisfying to read that Philip Roth is a great writer.
In many sections of the book, I expected better language especially knowing her background. Toward the end, I felt a mild change in regards to language which I enjoyed.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 2, 2020
There is some truth to the charge of name dropping in this memoir. It is also holding back, and one does wonder how her children felt reading about their father.
Yet, it is still a good read.
Yet, it is still a good read.
July 22, 2018
I couldn't help but read this as a political book: a description of a life of extreme privilege, even if not riches. Personal tragedies are much easier to overcome when you have the right education and the right connections. And somehow I am now weeks later still hounded by the thought that this is exactly what's wrong with the Labour party today! :D It's a playground for upper middle-class, who need to work to make a living, rather than a party that looks out for those without the privilege of education and connections.
There was also a lack of insight, development, learning. What did the narrator think, feel, learn? There was no passion. Which I suppose is fine if you are writing about someone else's life; but when it's your own, surely you were angry, sad, desperate, enraged? But no, just sensible and well-behaved. I don't think that's a lesson of which women need any more reminding.
As a historical description of life and times, interesting enough; as a look into another human's world, meh.
There was also a lack of insight, development, learning. What did the narrator think, feel, learn? There was no passion. Which I suppose is fine if you are writing about someone else's life; but when it's your own, surely you were angry, sad, desperate, enraged? But no, just sensible and well-behaved. I don't think that's a lesson of which women need any more reminding.
As a historical description of life and times, interesting enough; as a look into another human's world, meh.
June 2, 2023
I have a few of Tomalin's biographies teed up and decided to read her memoir first. I had very little knowledge of her, and it's a brisk tour she takes us on, through her childhood, her parents' marriage, her education, her marriage, children, her work, etc. She writes her life with a dry wit, and despite its formality, there is, at times, something of a shorthand - if you don't know who the people are, you won't learn much from what she writes about them, and also a sense that she is writing about herself from too great a distance, but it is an interesting and fruitful life she has led, finding her way to much without a clear plan. And despite the privilege she has had, there have also been dark times, and shocks, handled gracefully. I found myself increasingly interested in learning about a woman who continued, with humor and reserve, to find herself.
April 16, 2019
Clare Tomalin was literary editor of the Sunday Times and has written several acclaimed biographies. This is her autobiography. She has lived an interesting life and she writes well, but I had the same frustrations with it that I had with Rose Tremain's recent memoir. Both are from a similar era (Tomalin is 10 years older) and there is only so much that they are willing to share. So we read a lot about Tomalin's work successes, we get the names of just about everyone she was at school with or worked with (whether they played a significant or only a minor role in her life), but we get very little about how she coped with the hardships that life sent her way and if she ever had a moment of self-doubt she does not share it.
I was fascinated by Tomalin's first marriage. Nick was a charismatic and charming man but he was also what I'd call a "bad egg". He cheated on her often and left her on more than one occasion. He physically abused her. His father (who sounds like a horrible man) seems to have thought this was all quite reasonable. Partly because of their children, she took him back. After his death she found a pile of love letters written to him by various girlfriends and even then she just thinks "if he'd lived, he'd have made sure I never saw them". Where was the hurt? The anger? Once - only once - she lets slip that she broke down in tears. A couple of times she had affairs herself - she is vague about these details too. Frankly, I wanted to know more about this, not the names of the writers that she was having lunch with. She comes across as a cold person. I don't think she necessarily is, but in any case I am certain she'd have no interest in my opinion of her.
I ended the book feeling respectful of Tomalin, of the way she raised her children and what she accomplished in her career. But I don't feel like I got to know her.
I was fascinated by Tomalin's first marriage. Nick was a charismatic and charming man but he was also what I'd call a "bad egg". He cheated on her often and left her on more than one occasion. He physically abused her. His father (who sounds like a horrible man) seems to have thought this was all quite reasonable. Partly because of their children, she took him back. After his death she found a pile of love letters written to him by various girlfriends and even then she just thinks "if he'd lived, he'd have made sure I never saw them". Where was the hurt? The anger? Once - only once - she lets slip that she broke down in tears. A couple of times she had affairs herself - she is vague about these details too. Frankly, I wanted to know more about this, not the names of the writers that she was having lunch with. She comes across as a cold person. I don't think she necessarily is, but in any case I am certain she'd have no interest in my opinion of her.
I ended the book feeling respectful of Tomalin, of the way she raised her children and what she accomplished in her career. But I don't feel like I got to know her.
December 2, 2018
Literate (literary critic and biographer), honest, and unapologetic memoir of her life in England. My therapist suggested it, perhaps in hopes of encouraging me to develop some bravado for single life in old age, however I have the attitude, just not the money, career and the connections, so don't know if it was useful in that regard. In any event, this was a clear emotional description of losing a child.
“Grief has to be set aside, but it does not go away. It arrives each morning as you awake, lies in wait in the familiar routines of the day, takes you by surprise. You may not lose the power to enjoy the pleasures offered by the world but you stand in a different relation to them, in some ways most intense because you now know how fragile they are. The best things I saw, heard, read, felt, often brought me to tears because they came with the knowledge that my daughter was never going to return to share them. She had gone forever. She would have no children. I looked for her in old photographs, none offering what I was trying to find. Her writing – letters poems, fragments of stories – were a reminder of how alive she had been. Her clothes and books, all the reminders of how she had lived, were there, saying too much but also not enough.” - Claire Tomalin A Life of My Own
‘Surprised by joy, impatient as the wind,
I turned to share the transport – Oh! With whom
But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find.
Love, fabled love, recalled thee to my mind –
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?’ - Wordsworth
“Grief has to be set aside, but it does not go away. It arrives each morning as you awake, lies in wait in the familiar routines of the day, takes you by surprise. You may not lose the power to enjoy the pleasures offered by the world but you stand in a different relation to them, in some ways most intense because you now know how fragile they are. The best things I saw, heard, read, felt, often brought me to tears because they came with the knowledge that my daughter was never going to return to share them. She had gone forever. She would have no children. I looked for her in old photographs, none offering what I was trying to find. Her writing – letters poems, fragments of stories – were a reminder of how alive she had been. Her clothes and books, all the reminders of how she had lived, were there, saying too much but also not enough.” - Claire Tomalin A Life of My Own
‘Surprised by joy, impatient as the wind,
I turned to share the transport – Oh! With whom
But thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find.
Love, fabled love, recalled thee to my mind –
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?’ - Wordsworth
July 14, 2020
I have real problems with the self-perception of the author with this one. Granted, Tomalin has led an interesting life and she has also had to endure the birth of a child suffering from spina bifida and the death of her husband on reporting duty in Palestine – indeed, she is excellent on the mixed emotions following this event given that the man in question was selfish and perennially unfaithful and unreliable. Her determination to move on after the ceremony surrounding his funeral and obituary is powerful.
But her description of herself as ‘poor’ is blown out of the water so many times by the facts laid in front of us. She’s reading the complete works of Shakespeare and listening to Mahler at age six and a half – maybe you can be poor and do these things now, but I doubt that were the case in the 1930s. After that, her life becomes a whole series of open doors that she only has to push at slightly, friends who live in stately homes, a vast majority of privately educated acquaintances and trips to Glyndebourne. Maybe I have a chip on my shoulder but there are old-fashioned attitudes in this book that reflect an idea of class whereby those just outside the richest 0.5% of the population still see themselves as acutely underprivileged. Then there is the name dropping – interesting up to a point and she at least has the decency to criticise Andrew Neil – but this is a portrait of a different world that left me scratching my head at the authors’ lack of awareness of how 99% of people actually live.
But her description of herself as ‘poor’ is blown out of the water so many times by the facts laid in front of us. She’s reading the complete works of Shakespeare and listening to Mahler at age six and a half – maybe you can be poor and do these things now, but I doubt that were the case in the 1930s. After that, her life becomes a whole series of open doors that she only has to push at slightly, friends who live in stately homes, a vast majority of privately educated acquaintances and trips to Glyndebourne. Maybe I have a chip on my shoulder but there are old-fashioned attitudes in this book that reflect an idea of class whereby those just outside the richest 0.5% of the population still see themselves as acutely underprivileged. Then there is the name dropping – interesting up to a point and she at least has the decency to criticise Andrew Neil – but this is a portrait of a different world that left me scratching my head at the authors’ lack of awareness of how 99% of people actually live.
May 25, 2021
Available as a ten-hour audio download. I always think that autobiographies on audio gain something when read by the author, but this one is read by an actor. Still, very enjoyable.
I’ve only read one book by Tomalin -- her biography of Samuel Pepys -- but that was more than enough to be able to enjoy this audio book. This book is partially about the literary life, but to a surprising extent it is about other things -- love affairs and family especially, with a special emphasis on the joys and heartbreaks of being a parent.
So, for example, when Kurt Vonnegut comes to her home for dinner, no details are given except for the fact that the dinner took place, but when one of Tomalin’s daughters slides into mental illness , be prepared to hear about the harrowing tale from beginning to end.
I was also surprised at the amount of nerdy hanky-panky that people found time for, while they were also holding down jobs, raising families, writing books, and engaging in comfortable travel. Unfortunately, it seems like the world will never be quite this way again, so we’ll all have to settled for knowing it second-hand.
A New York Times Notable Book of 2018.
I’ve only read one book by Tomalin -- her biography of Samuel Pepys -- but that was more than enough to be able to enjoy this audio book. This book is partially about the literary life, but to a surprising extent it is about other things -- love affairs and family especially, with a special emphasis on the joys and heartbreaks of being a parent.
So, for example, when Kurt Vonnegut comes to her home for dinner, no details are given except for the fact that the dinner took place, but when one of Tomalin’s daughters slides into mental illness , be prepared to hear about the harrowing tale from beginning to end.
I was also surprised at the amount of nerdy hanky-panky that people found time for, while they were also holding down jobs, raising families, writing books, and engaging in comfortable travel. Unfortunately, it seems like the world will never be quite this way again, so we’ll all have to settled for knowing it second-hand.
A New York Times Notable Book of 2018.
November 13, 2018
I’m sure I would have enjoyed this more had I known more than 50% of the names she was dropping throughout. And she was very discreet to the point that only those who knew her at any given time would know any real details. She lived with and worked with so many people who deserve a bit more than a mention in a series of names. Even when speaking of her son’s disabilities and her daughter’s suicide she maintains a stiff upper lip and displays no authentic emotion in her writing. I’m not asking that she bleed on the page but she approaches her own life as she does those of Thomas Hardy or Charles Dickens: thoroughly yet not truly able to be known, academically. Why write an autobiography/memoir if you’re going to keep yourself so tidily locked down?
March 7, 2019
Maybe Tomalin's biographies are more interesting. But this memoir missed everything that could have been interesting - emotions! gossip! It was incredibly restrained, like Tomalin was hiding a lot of her true self, and despite the seemingly endless naming of specific people, there were very few interesting observations or stories. She seems like a wonderful and intelligent woman who has been through a lot of difficult times, but I just don't think writing memoir is the same as writing biography.
August 29, 2018
I didn't know anything about Claire Tomalin before I came across her autobiography but I decided to read it anyway. I did like it, for the most part, I think she lived an interesting and full life. I will probably try to find a couple of her books, "The invisible woman" or "The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft"
December 13, 2018
Actually a 3.5....an autobiography by a fascinating, remarkable woman, British/French, who is a writer, biographer, mother, wife, daughter; and how all of those parts have moved around one another over the decades.
January 23, 2018
Really enjoyed this autobiography. I didn't know much about Tomalin, except the books she'd written, so there was much for me to learn. Written in a very engaging way.
April 26, 2024
Admirable memoir about a writer's life, lived among memorable, clever people through the mid- to late-20th century. Especially interesting was her upbringing - the daughter of two brilliant parents who ended up despising one another. Both of them loved Tomalin, though, and she was educated and encouraged despite their disastrous relationship.
I honestly found the book difficult to finish, because Tomalin, a noted biographer, lost her somewhat errant husband, journalist Nick Tomalin, to a missile strike in the Golan Heights when he was reporting on the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Her description is matter-of-fact but so, so tragic. One of the saddest sentences I've ever read:
"I had now to telephone Beth, Nick's mother, and give her the news that the son she loved more than her own life had been killed" (201).
Her grief plays out while surrounded by friends and family, and she goes on to forge an amazing career and raise her and Nick's children, including their disabled son Tom, admirably, but the reader gets a profound sense of the isolation she sometimes felt as a widow bereft too early in life.
It was actually the second tragedy she dealt with, the loss of her brilliant daughter Susanna, that made me put the book down for a while even though I was close to finishing. It seemed like too much for one woman to bear. But when I came back to her story, I was glad to read that Tomalin developed her career as an author, editor, and biographer, maintained many friendships with the literati, and found love later in life with playwright and novelist Michael Frayn (whose book Headlong I read years ago and also highly recommend).
You will get a wonderful sense of the milieu in which she and Nick (and later she and Michael Frayn) thrived. When she was literary editor at The New Statesman, she counted Martin Amis and Julian Barnes among her deputies. She lectured in front of John Updike about his work ("A nightmare") and had a delightful encounter with Saul Bellow. Alan Bennett, Christopher Hitchens, Cecil Day Lewis, Beryl Bainbridge - just a few examples of the famous figures in British literature and culture she met, edited, worked with, socialized with, and befriended. And, of course, she wrote all of her acclaimed biographies: Samuel Pepys, Katherine Mansfield, Jane Austen, Nelly Ternan, Charles Dickens. But it is still as a wife, mother, and daughter that the reader gains the most intimate and profound sense of who Tomalin is. She has been devoted to Tom all his life, proud of how independent he is despite his disability, and inspired by him; she was equally devoted to her parents as they were approaching the end of life, and faulted herself for not devoting enough time to them, her mother in particular - a genuine feeling that many women undergo in mid-life.
Now in her nineties (as is Frayn), she talks about how her "seventies and eighties have been easy" (330), describing a life of gardening, writing and editing, traveling, public speaking, concerts, opera, films, and enjoying her husband's writing. Plus the joys of six surviving children and ten grandchildren between them. The joyful tone of the last chapter had me hoping for many more years for this erudite pair of writers. A delightful memoir despite the sadness.
I honestly found the book difficult to finish, because Tomalin, a noted biographer, lost her somewhat errant husband, journalist Nick Tomalin, to a missile strike in the Golan Heights when he was reporting on the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Her description is matter-of-fact but so, so tragic. One of the saddest sentences I've ever read:
"I had now to telephone Beth, Nick's mother, and give her the news that the son she loved more than her own life had been killed" (201).
Her grief plays out while surrounded by friends and family, and she goes on to forge an amazing career and raise her and Nick's children, including their disabled son Tom, admirably, but the reader gets a profound sense of the isolation she sometimes felt as a widow bereft too early in life.
It was actually the second tragedy she dealt with, the loss of her brilliant daughter Susanna, that made me put the book down for a while even though I was close to finishing. It seemed like too much for one woman to bear. But when I came back to her story, I was glad to read that Tomalin developed her career as an author, editor, and biographer, maintained many friendships with the literati, and found love later in life with playwright and novelist Michael Frayn (whose book Headlong I read years ago and also highly recommend).
You will get a wonderful sense of the milieu in which she and Nick (and later she and Michael Frayn) thrived. When she was literary editor at The New Statesman, she counted Martin Amis and Julian Barnes among her deputies. She lectured in front of John Updike about his work ("A nightmare") and had a delightful encounter with Saul Bellow. Alan Bennett, Christopher Hitchens, Cecil Day Lewis, Beryl Bainbridge - just a few examples of the famous figures in British literature and culture she met, edited, worked with, socialized with, and befriended. And, of course, she wrote all of her acclaimed biographies: Samuel Pepys, Katherine Mansfield, Jane Austen, Nelly Ternan, Charles Dickens. But it is still as a wife, mother, and daughter that the reader gains the most intimate and profound sense of who Tomalin is. She has been devoted to Tom all his life, proud of how independent he is despite his disability, and inspired by him; she was equally devoted to her parents as they were approaching the end of life, and faulted herself for not devoting enough time to them, her mother in particular - a genuine feeling that many women undergo in mid-life.
Now in her nineties (as is Frayn), she talks about how her "seventies and eighties have been easy" (330), describing a life of gardening, writing and editing, traveling, public speaking, concerts, opera, films, and enjoying her husband's writing. Plus the joys of six surviving children and ten grandchildren between them. The joyful tone of the last chapter had me hoping for many more years for this erudite pair of writers. A delightful memoir despite the sadness.
March 29, 2020
I can't remember why I added this book to my shelf and it's not the type of story I would ordinarily seek out. I think it might have been because I came across her first husband's story last year when I was reading a biography of Marie Colvin, another Sunday Times journalist killed while reporting on a war.
As a foreigner, most of the name-dropping of the mid-20th century literary set was lost on me (with a few very notable exceptions - and, actually, I realised thanks to her mention of a few social issues on the second last page that I had come across Claire Tomalin herself during my time working at a prison reform charity). But more books must have come out of Gloucester Crescent in Camden than just about any residential street in the world, and I am looking forward to reading a few more of them now. Tomalin's friend commented to her that a biographer is lucky to live in London where history lives on every street, and I feel lucky to live here and be able to go and visit these places I've read about. For me, it's much different to reading a book set in places I already know.
Despite the unfamiliarity to me, it was a really compelling book which I read in two sittings during the Great Quarantine of 2020. This time feels like something which would happen in the life of one of Tomalin's subjects - Austen or Pepys for example. Given her apparent skill in writing about those famous lives, it should come as no surprise that she has done such a good job in writing about her own.
As a foreigner, most of the name-dropping of the mid-20th century literary set was lost on me (with a few very notable exceptions - and, actually, I realised thanks to her mention of a few social issues on the second last page that I had come across Claire Tomalin herself during my time working at a prison reform charity). But more books must have come out of Gloucester Crescent in Camden than just about any residential street in the world, and I am looking forward to reading a few more of them now. Tomalin's friend commented to her that a biographer is lucky to live in London where history lives on every street, and I feel lucky to live here and be able to go and visit these places I've read about. For me, it's much different to reading a book set in places I already know.
Despite the unfamiliarity to me, it was a really compelling book which I read in two sittings during the Great Quarantine of 2020. This time feels like something which would happen in the life of one of Tomalin's subjects - Austen or Pepys for example. Given her apparent skill in writing about those famous lives, it should come as no surprise that she has done such a good job in writing about her own.
May 4, 2023
Brilliant, compelling, honest, reflexive, considerate.
A good model to use for write an autobiography. She experienced loss with the death of two children & her first husband. She alludes to grieving but doesn’t dwell on the bereavement journey.
She mentions her loving mother who gave her unstinting, unconditional love & she has regrets about her passing away when she considers that she may have failed her in not providing her with a secure, happy last year. Her relationship with her Father did not begin on a good footing but did grow as time passed and at the end of his nearly 98 years they found common ground.
Claire Tomalin has written many biographies of literary figures, she discuses this in this personal account of her life. I would like to read more of what she has written.
Claire Tomalin is 90 next month. She has an on-going relationship with her living children & her second husband Michael Frayn, fellow author & playwright. I unhesitatingly recommend this autobiography.
A good model to use for write an autobiography. She experienced loss with the death of two children & her first husband. She alludes to grieving but doesn’t dwell on the bereavement journey.
She mentions her loving mother who gave her unstinting, unconditional love & she has regrets about her passing away when she considers that she may have failed her in not providing her with a secure, happy last year. Her relationship with her Father did not begin on a good footing but did grow as time passed and at the end of his nearly 98 years they found common ground.
Claire Tomalin has written many biographies of literary figures, she discuses this in this personal account of her life. I would like to read more of what she has written.
Claire Tomalin is 90 next month. She has an on-going relationship with her living children & her second husband Michael Frayn, fellow author & playwright. I unhesitatingly recommend this autobiography.
October 20, 2025
I have always admired Claire Tomalin’s authorative and scholarly biographies (those I have read -;Samuel Pepys particularly stayed in my mind long after I had read it) and I was delighted to come across her autobiography which I became utterly gripped by. Odd really, with an autobiography or a memoir, it’s not as though anything utterly startling is going to happen, and indeed I knew the bones of her life and career. But the quality of the writing held me and I found myself feeling like a privileged onlooker in her life.
She has a dispassionate and somewhat distant style, rather politely telling us little about family members who might not want to be made public, but describing grief and loss, pain and anguish in a way that feels utterly true. Of course, it’s full of Names but then she was literary editor of the Sunday Times and knew Names and is herself a Name, so I suppose it’s not surprising. Anyhow, I really enjoyed it and thoroughly recommend it.
She has a dispassionate and somewhat distant style, rather politely telling us little about family members who might not want to be made public, but describing grief and loss, pain and anguish in a way that feels utterly true. Of course, it’s full of Names but then she was literary editor of the Sunday Times and knew Names and is herself a Name, so I suppose it’s not surprising. Anyhow, I really enjoyed it and thoroughly recommend it.
April 4, 2024
Well, this is how to name drop and get good reviews (in newspapers and magazines) for it. Possibly because the reviewers are those mentioned? It’s certainly an incestuous world she lives and works in.
I enjoyed the first part of her life, and the lives of her family too, but got fed up with all the people she kept mentioning. There’s also a certain irony in that she insisted on a book having to have an index added, yet she didn’t bother to provide it in this one! A Who’s Who would have been handy too. I also feel I don’t need to read any of her biographies now as she very kindly précised them all for me.
So why was it written? And who would buy it, apart from all the people mentioned in it? Her obituary writer perhaps?
I enjoyed the first part of her life, and the lives of her family too, but got fed up with all the people she kept mentioning. There’s also a certain irony in that she insisted on a book having to have an index added, yet she didn’t bother to provide it in this one! A Who’s Who would have been handy too. I also feel I don’t need to read any of her biographies now as she very kindly précised them all for me.
So why was it written? And who would buy it, apart from all the people mentioned in it? Her obituary writer perhaps?
August 15, 2020
3.5+ Audiobook. Book group selection. Interesting stories about an amazing life, but the writing often seemed mechanical and included too many details.
Stories about her children’s mental and physical disabilities were worth hearing.
I kept being distracted by Penelope Wilton’s narration because I kept seeing her in Downton Abbey...😊
I do want to read some of the biographies written by the author because I hear they are better than her autobiography.
Stories about her children’s mental and physical disabilities were worth hearing.
I kept being distracted by Penelope Wilton’s narration because I kept seeing her in Downton Abbey...😊
I do want to read some of the biographies written by the author because I hear they are better than her autobiography.
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December 14, 2021A good literary gossip, plus the entertaining, ordinary life of an interesting woman.
July 27, 2025
I very much enjoyed her biography on Dickens, and intend to read her other bios. The author writes very well. She led an interesting life.
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