Sad Boy Walpaper Biography
Source (Google.com.pk)
Dickens fans
ought to be feeling grateful to H. G. Wells right now. Why? Because if
the Time Machine author hadn’t been such a rampant old goat, he – rather
than the mighty Victorian novelist – might well have been the subject
of Claire Tomalin’s latest, much celebrated work.
“I spent a lot
of time thinking about doing a biography of H G Wells, whose young life
is absolutely wonderful,” she says. “He’s just the sort of person I
like: he came out of dire poverty and became great entirely through his
own effort; he was a writer of genius when he was young.
“But then his
life dwindles into far too many love affairs. I have a sort of
‘biographer’s rule’ that people who have too many love affairs really
don’t make good biographical subjects, because they become so boring and
monotonous.”
Really? Aren’t
they racy and exciting? “Well they aren’t, you see. One or two perhaps,
but when they go on and on and on, you just feel like yawning.”
Instead,
Tomalin has turned her attentions to the behemoth of Victorian
literature, Charles Dickens, who she explored indirectly once before -
via his secret 18-year-old mistress, Nelly Ternan - in her bestselling
1990 biography The Invisible Woman.
Revisiting the
great man following the publication of his many letters has been quite
an undertaking, but the result - Charles Dickens, A Life - looks set to
become as revered as every other Tomalin biography: over the years, she
has written to great acclaim about the likes of Jane Austen, Samuel
Pepys and Thomas Hardy.
Yet Tomalin’s own life is arguably every bit as interesting as that of her subjects.
Born in 1933,
Tomalin had a difficult childhood; her mother and French father were
often at loggerheads, and separated when she was 7. She sought solace in
books, and had devoured the complete works of Shakespeare by the age of
12. It was of little surprise, then, that the fiercely bright
schoolgirl won a place at Cambridge, coming to Newnham when she’d just
turned 18.
“They were
years of turmoil,” she admits. “There were 10 men to every woman in
those days, so you’d get involved in love affairs, and the difficulty of
combining love affairs with work was considerable!
“But of course it was an overwhelming experience. It formed my life.”
Did she know at
the time that she would be a writer? “No, I thought I was a poet. I
published quite a lot of poetry in magazines, but when I finished at
Cambridge, I realised that I didn’t have an individual voice as a poet,
and that’s the one thing that matters. So I gave up.”
Nevertheless,
her poetry caught the eye of a young student who came to Cambridge four
years later: the novelist and playwright Michael Frayn.
“He had read
some of my poetry and thought I had an amazingly romantic name – my
maiden name was Claire Delavenay; he thought ‘ah, a girl called Claire
Delavenay’,” she chuckles. Frayn is now her husband.
Yet the pair
didn’t meet at Cambridge; shortly after graduating (with a first,
naturally) she married fellow student Nick Tomalin. He went into
journalism, she into publishing – and then she became pregnant.
Having always
been on a par with her male contemporaries at Cambridge, becoming
suddenly tied to the kitchen sink felt rather alien to Tomalin: “It was a
shock to young women I think; when you seem to have been on absolutely
equal terms, and then you have a baby, and then another baby… You don’t
really realise what you’re in for, and it must be said, you’re in for
life! Children never stop tugging at your heart, if not at your help.”
But unlike many
other young mothers, Tomalin sought work: “It never crossed my mind
that I wouldn’t. So when I was having babies I read for publishers, and
then I began doing some reviewing. Then that lead on to becoming deputy
literary editor at the New Statesman, and so it went on.”
By this time,
Tomalin had had four children, one of whom died when he was just a month
old. But when her fifth child was born with spina bifida, she decided
to stay at home - and writing a biography seemed a natural thing to do.
“I’m really a
historian; what I really wanted to read at Cambridge was history, but
for various reasons I didn’t. I read English, which was great fun; you
just do all the reading you’d be doing anyhow!
“But that’s why
I turned to biography, which is history, of course. Historical research
is what interested me, and I began being particularly interested in the
history of women.”
Her first
biography focused on the writer, philosopher and pioneering feminist
Mary Wollstonecraft. “I felt when I started that women didn’t appear all
that much in history,” she explains. “If you look at George Trevelyan’s
social history of the nineteenth century, I think there are two index
entries for ‘women’, and I thought there was a lot to explore.
“And I really,
really enjoyed it. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, writing a biography –
you’re discovering things and putting together the bits. I thought it
was terrific.”
With the book
complete, Tomalin went back to work, becoming literary editor of the New
Statesman, then holding the same post at the Sunday Times. She left in
the mid-80s to write full-time, with her biographies charting the likes
of Shelley, Katherine Mansfield and Thomas Hardy.
So why Dickens
now? “Well when I was writing The Invisible Woman, a friend of mine said
‘Claire, why are you writing about Ternan and not about Dickens?’ And I
said “Because I’ve got a very good story to tell, that needs telling.’
She was his companion for the last 12 years of his life, and was one of
these women precisely who I thought had been written out of history.
“But I
remembered that. And I’ve always loved Dickens; I’ve always thought he
was an extraordinary figure, so it just seemed to me it was a very
absorbing way of spending four or five years.”
It’s a long
time to focus on one person – doesn’t she ever feel fed up with her
subjects? “It is tiring,” admits Tomalin. “I sometimes feel as though
I’m walking around with a great stone on top of my head. But then of
course you feel sad when you’ve finished.”
Will she ever
write her autobiography? “No,” she replies, bluntly. Why not? “I don’t
think I’m a sufficiently interesting person.” Even though you’ve had
such a vibrant life? “I’ve had quite a sad life, actually.”
This is
something of an understatement. Tragedy seems to have followed Tomalin
at every turn; there was the death of her baby; then her first husband
was killed by a missile while on assignment in Israel in 1973; she also
lost her daughter, who committed suicide at the age of 22. Has she never
wanted to write about these momentous events? “No. I’m not very keen on
misery memoirs.”
These days,
Tomalin works in the London home she shares with Frayn. It is, she says,
a very happy marriage – even when the pair are in competition: her
Pepys biography was up against Frayn’s novel Spies in the 2003 Whitbread
(now Costa) prize, “which was of course absolutely amazing for us,
because we got all this ridiculous publicity. Both our books sold like
hot cakes, so it didn’t really matter to us who won!”
Tomalin
eventually scooped the £25,000 prize, and she admits she was thrilled:
“I do love my Pepys book, so I was very pleased that it did so well.”
Does she have a
favourite among her subjects? “Not really. What I feel is I’ve got a
family that never go away. Mary Wollstonecraft is, as it were, my eldest
child, and so I love her especially. And of course I go on being
interested in them, and people go on asking me about them.
“Last week I
had someone from German radio coming to talk to me about Pepys; I had
someone from a television company wanting an opinion about Jane Austen…
it goes on and on.
“But I also
feel that I have not given as much time as I might to my children and
grandchildren, and I’d like to be able to spend more time with them. At
the moment there’s no question, because next year is the 200th
anniversary of Dickens’s birth, so there’ll be a huge number of things
happening.”
But of all the
talks, interviews and readings she’ll inevitably be doing, coming to
Wordfest in the city that ‘formed her life’ is, says Tomalin, an utter
pleasure.
“I love Cambridge, I absolutely love Cambridge. My heart turns over when I see it.”
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Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
Sad Boy Walpaper And Girl In Love Alone Wallpaper Alone Crying Face And Girl In Rain Images Pic
