Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.
— Claire Tomalin
Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.
Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington.
Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.
When I wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft, I found that here she was, in the late 18th century, going to work for the 'Analytical Review.' What was the 'Analytical Review?' It was a magazine that dealt with politics and literature.
When dealing with a subject who is dead, you have this feeling of being God. You know who they're going to marry, when they're going to die. It's strange to feel so omniscient.
I'm usually convinced that what I'm working on is a total disaster.
I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 12, and I read the whole works. Yes, I was precocious.
The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny.
I have been fascinated by Dickens worshippers who strenuously deny that he did anything wrong in relation to his wife, even though the record is clear that he did.
Dickens was very practical and sensible.
'Philomena' was even better than I had expected. I was so pleased to see the evil Irish nuns thoroughly exposed, and I thought Judi Dench gave a flawless performance, as did everybody else.
I belong to the Richmond Concert Society, who put on very good concerts.
Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it.
I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.
I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people.
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.
Biographies are, in their nature, far more difficult to make into films than novels, because novels come with plots constructed and dialogue written, whereas I don't invent dialogue for my subjects or plot their lives for them.
'A Christmas Carol' has been described as the most perfect of Dickens's works and as a quintessential heart-warming story, and it is certainly the most popular.
Dickens never joined a political party nor put forward a political programme. He was a writer who rightly saw his power as coming through his fiction.
Dickens is always full of surprises.
I thought it was a glorious thing to be a critic and to be a literary editor, and one was really doing something that mattered: to keep up standards, to take books seriously.
In 2007, several musicologists contacted me at about the same time, expressing interest in the work of the mysterious Muriel Herbert, a few of whose songs they had come across.
I'm interested in history, in trying to relate the past to the present and to understand how people thought about their problems and pleasures.
I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am.
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.
It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration.
I always try to travel light.
'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.
You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.
When I kept a diary, I realised that it was all moanings and depression, and I think that is quite common.
I was very priggish as a child. I saved up for a book on medieval English nunneries, for which I was despised by my friends.
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 in a position to behave as badly, because you don't have the economic power.
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.
I had forgotten until I looked up old notes that I sold the film rights of my first book, a life of Mary Wollstonecraft: there was a lunch, a contract, a small sum of money, then nothing.
I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again.
As a young man, Dickens worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and hated it. He felt that all politicians spoke with the same voice.
I have been left-wing always, from childhood.
I was working at the 'Evening Standard' when I heard that there was a job going as deputy literary editor on the 'New Statesman.' I remember thinking, 'That's perfect.' It was three days a week, and I had children, but I could make that work - so I applied for it and got it.
My life was a sort of series of random disasters.
I think it's quite normal for people to have love affairs.
I think people are always saying things are 'over.' Fiction has been regularly 'over' since the 19th century.
Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner.
When you live with Dickens for years, reading him and trying to present him as faithfully as you can, you can't fail to love the man - so the shock of his bad behaviour is considerable, even when you know it is coming.
The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches or culture. It's a city rich in antiquity and early Christian treasures, and just endlessly fascinating. There's nowhere else like it.
Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.
It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child.
If I'm in a state about a book, I'll get up at 6 A.M. and write before breakfast, but usually I'll start afterwards and then work a full day with a break for lunch.
Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.
I would like to have a more social life than I have.
