Few biographers can equal Claire Tomalin’s reputation as the queen of British biography. After her beginnings in journalism, she’s had a long and glittering  career writing about the illustrious lives of Dickens and Pepys, Mary Wollstonecraft, Henry James, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Katherine Mansfield - an amazing roll call.

Modest and self-effacing herself,  Tomalin  has also shed life on women who have been forgotten  by history or overshadowed - like the actress Nelly Tiernan, who was Dickens’ lover, and another actress,Mrs Jordan, a royal mistress of William the Fourth who bore him ten illegitimate children.

As well as being dauntingly prolific, she manages to be both scholarly and popular. Since this interview, Tomalin has published her tenth  biography,  of the young HG Wells, announcing that it would be her last book, which is fair enough when you are 88.

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