Claire Tomalin was great

The Claire Tomalin event at Ways with Words was fantastic. Claire was a very accomplished and interesting speaker and gave an insight into the life of a historical biographer. The extensive research and how it took over her life for months or even years making her - in her words - difficult to live with. She had a real passion for Hardy and read poems from the book of Hardy poems that she edited. In the environment of the Great Hall this was very evocative of Hardy's assocaition with both landscape and human emotion. I sat next to a lady who told me that in her younger days she had a boyfriend that used to read her Hardy poems and how even though they went their seperate ways it inspired her to pursue a career in literature. She could obviously remember him very clearly and some - but not all of Hardy's poems are very romantic. Claire is now working on a biography of Dickens.

I am saving The Time-torn Man to read in September so that its fresh in my mind for the meeting.

I spoke to Claire and she signed my book and she was very flattered that we had chosen her book as one of our reading group choices.

I will make sure I bring the poetry book along and perhaps we can read some of them.

Paula