up next move, book tv will peter slen interviews authors in london, this week claire tomalin followed by the literary editor of the observer common rubber to one defeat does -- robert. >> book tv has traveled to

london to interview british authors and we are pleased to have with us this week award winning british author claire tomalin. she has written several books, several biographies. claire tomalin, your most recent book was on the charles dickens. why another which charles dickens book? >> guest: that is a good question. there are a lot of books and back to the biography written by his best friend, john foster, who was appointed by the dickens. they really loved each other and when dickens died, they said there is no more happiness for me now but i have a duty to write the biography. and he wrote a great free volume biography which i brought years ago that would fall into the bits on which everything has been written. i've written two books about him.

one was "the invisible woman," which was about his relationship with the nellt ternan the actress. as the years went by i gave my full attention to dickens it's like climbing mount everest, like five people. lionel trilling, great critics of the record is exhausting and that's true. dickens filled his life with parties and good work and his work with the writing and edited a weekly magazine and performed the buck. it's amazing that one man could have done what he did. >> host: how did he live and how well known was he during his lifetime? >> guest: he certainly burned himself out i think doing all that he did. he was born into a poor family.

in fact, his maternal grandfather had to flee the country for the navy pay office and would have gone to prison. so he had a not very promising background but he was a very bright little boy and he had almost no education. he became a reporter and began to write sketches of london life and gave them to the newspapers and he sold them to newspapers. they were very popular and they said why not make them into two volumes and publish them and get an illustrator. a great artist, 1886 they were published and they were a huge worth reading if he would like to know what he was like in the 30's and another publisher's office and said we want to commission you to write a novel and that was the papers.

his first novels which absolutely made him famous. so between leaving school at 15 at the age of 24, he made himself and from then on he became famous and was translated all over the world. he was a huge hit in america as you note to the great trips to america. he was a key democrat and pretty well a republican. >> host: what do you mean by that? >> guest: he often described himself as a republican. he didn't really believe in the marquee. during his wife, queen victoria was a great success so he started at the very end of his life he went to them and talk together. but he welcomed the revolution of 1848 when they got rid of the king and he always leave the little people and when he first went to boston on his first trip

he said that's what he wanted to say in his books that it's the little people that matter. people of no significance. he wanted to show that they were significant and that the matter to. he was an extremely good man. he did a great deal of good and raised money for great causes. he set up a home for homeless women and he gave huge energy to running that for 11 years. he even shows that and mrs. it all the time. absolutely remarkable. while he was writing his great book then he had a crisis. he met the young actress and he parted from his wife and behave appallingly to his wife. here was a very good man that wanted to be seen doing

something and that made the last part of the book very difficult to write because to write about somebody who is extremely good and who has done something bad and is trying to deal with that to partly conceal it and justify himself, it is a difficult thing to write about as a biographer. some people say you love deacons? is coming you can't write about -- it was very painful for me writing that part of the book. >> host: claire tomalin, would it be fair to say charles dickens is the english mark twain? >> guest: yes, absolutely. mark twain in some ways was even whittier. in fact, his last manager where the performance of the work went on and became the manager so they have a link. he quarreled in america because they didn't have the power to the right and he was angry about that and was popular in america pity if he was getting no money

so he fought with the americans. but then when he went back in 1867, 68, he had a love with the americans and it ended a very, very well. >> host: claire tomalin is the winner of the book award which is what? >> guest: the book award was set up for several decades ago a rather complicated prize with several categories. i first one it with my first book because they set up a special category for the first book since it was very important for me to the it was marvelous. but each year it causes a lot of controversy because they are setting up the best novel against the best biography against the best poetry and is always very difficult to make those choices. i was a judge once. and more recently, i won it for

my book on samuel and ten years ago in 2003. and that one was the best biography section. my husband small bowl one the best fiction. the press went mad because these two authors were married to each other come heads against each other for the prize and it didn't really matter which of us were on the prize, but i did. >> host: those two books let's start with the most recent. who was samuel pepys. >> they called it pep-ys that we know that it was pronounced pepys. he was born in 1633 and of a poor family. again i always right from people that come from humble background and make their way.

i find that an interesting thing to do. so his father was a taylor and his mother did of washing in london. he was clever. he went to cambridge. when crumble was running the country and they took them out of oxford and cambridge and appointed his own men because he knew if he were to run the country you needed to have your people teaching the clever young people so he was at cambridge for a long time. and he had a cousin that was a friend and fought with cromwell, but then after he died, she was one of those who supported the charles ii she was given every opportunity and his young cousin got a very good job in the needy

and in the office and made his career. the most interesting thing about him is that he had learned shorthand at cambridge and started keeping a diary in the 16 sixties when they came back. for nine and a half years this young man wrote a diary of what it was like to live and work in london and it is one of the most marvelous documents ever written to the he was a renaissance man curious about everything. he was interested in everyone and he noticed she had the knack of being in the right place at the right time. so the fire of london, he was there. he was actually he went to see charles i and went back to his school and boasted about. he was very strongly against him at that time.

his diary is unique because most of us if we write a diary is we want to look good in them but he didn't come he wanted actually to show this person and that is exactly what he does come and he starts aside from himself and tells all of the worst things in fiscal be a fair hearing of his work -- he's wonderfully interested in the job, he writes marvelously about the job in the navy office which he didn't really care about. he gradually gets interested and he describes all of the things he needs to study and master's the job and knows he's better at it than his superiors. he's a very attractive carrier. he's always running after girls and then feeling guilty about it so he buys his wife a pearl necklace and adores his wife and

then he is insane with jealousy and all of this is laid out day after day for nine and a half years and it is just a fabulous read. >> host: what was his daily life then in london? >> guest: he had his house given to him. he was always in proving it and hanging pictures and making it better. he loved that and he would go across the aisle to work but of course he would go out of london. he would go to huntington where his cousin had his great house and he would take his wife out and would describe all of the pleasures of life as well as all of the work and the huge range he adored her and respected her

and she is a wonderful figure and then his little made one who is another very interesting character and his wife is a terrific characters and you get a sense of fully lived life. he talks about shopkeepers he covers the whole range of life. >> host: where did you find his diary and additional research? >> guest: he left it to his old college in came cambridge and it wasn't transcript until the 19th century and then were shocking because it was actual details and stuff like that so it was published early in part and it was only in the 1960's

that the two scholars began to do a full transcript of publishing and as it was coming out, everybody knows about pepys but i only read a timely fragment and started reading these complete volumes and became very obsessed. when it came out in paperback i was asked to leave you peter back and as i did that, i thought i would really like to write about pepys. he'd been worried about the grand on the lovely book's in the 1930's. but i still thought that he was chiefly interested in him as a naval administration and i was chiefly interested and i am interested as the man that showed the working part of his life, the workers administrators, civil servant was always entirely mixed with

the private aspect, and that seemed to me absolutely true and that pepys gives one of the greatest examples of how that is true. so i also wanted to write a book that would make the reading of the diaries of it easier because they can be quite difficult if you don't know who all the characters are and i hoped my sort of taking different themes would help people read them. >> host: would americans be interested in reading about samuel pepys? >> guest: well, the rp bigot they have quite a lot of copies of my books on pepys. i think everybody is interested. the of the english topics but a wonderful man in france has translated and it is actually --

>> host: who is mary roi wollstonecraft? >> she was born in the mid 18th century, and she was what we call the french philosophers who say that we are all preparing the encyclopedia and she took up the topic of the women's rights and she wrote a tremendous book called the vending indication of the rights and she became famous just before the french revolution. she went to paris and witnessed the revolution. she was quite a severe young woman. her family didn't have much money she tried various jobs being a companion and doing the sort of things the women did. then she got this wonderful job

in london for a publisher and that is what drew me to her. i wrote about her living in london alone working on a magazine and at the time that is when i was living in london working on the new statesman struggling with child care and writing and reading and she wrote such letters i thought she is like a sister. she wrote two novels and the second one is a fragmented account. she died in childbirth having had her second daughter who began a grew up to marry so the philosopher, her first child of was a rather bad levy behaved american who then made themselves scarce. >> host: was she considered

radical in her time and what were some of her ideas that were their rights for women? >> guest: she thought they should have the same education and should have access to the professions. and she actually said at the end of this that she thought they should have the liberal rights and she was going to write about that later. she thought the whole sexual relationship was wrong if women were regarded as pretty toys or balls where men have a monopoly of reason. she felt that they should become much closer all of which i think has happened >> host: claire tomalin where did you grow up and go to school and first job here in london. >> guest: my father was french and my mother was an english woman and the war came so we were out of london and then i live outside london for a while

with my mother and i went to cambridge university to study english which was important and i got my first job in publishing, came back to london and i've lived there ever since. what did you ask me? >> you're first job. >> publishing. >> i got a job as an editorial assistant and when i finished my father said it's very well but women need to do short hand typing so he made me. this was 1954. i went into publishing. i didn't do much shortened or typing but it's very useful for a researcher. and so i was reading manuscripts and doing all these the you do in a publishing firm. i got married.

>> host: who was? >> guest: he was a very good journalist, he covered the vietnam war and he was killed in covering the sunday times. we had quite a complicated marriage through the swinging 60's and we had -- well we actually had five children, but when he was killed -- i had been working in publishing during journalism and reviewing and some television and those sort of things you can do and i started doing children's books so that was lawfully because all of my children had these books to read. i then became an assistant on the statesman for the left-wing magazine and when nec was

killed, the job of literary editor came up at the new statesman. >> host: 1973. >> guest: they asked me to become a literary editor who was a friend who was the editor and worked in america and he said you have to do this. you have to do this. we knew each other very well. and i hesitated because i had a very small -- my son was very small. and i thought it's really better for them to have another that is doing something i've also been writing my first book. >> host: did you choose a new state and because of your politics.

does the statement still exist today? >> guest: yes it has had its ups and downs but it is doing rather well at the moment they've had a political front half and a cultural back half and if you are in the cultural back half you are not required to adopt them if you were concerned with the book reviewing, so it was wonderful and you live in the world of extremely congenial people who are redoing the theater, films and you are choosing puppetry, we publish poetry. i remember asking for what if i could publish an extract. and i can't remember whether he said yes or no. >> host: was it weird to have a woman editor?

>> guest: the books have somehow been a source of unallowable territory for the women, people were too worried by women making cultural decisions. when i was a little girl i amounted to be the first woman prime minister but i'm afraid i never made that. >> host: well, claire tomalin, you mentioned that you were alive during world war ii and that people watching this program may be surprised by that because you don't look old enough to be alive during world war ii. what do you remember about world war ii? >> guest: the declaration of war i was with my parents in the country club that we used to go in spain and i can remember everyone sitting around and hearing the declaration and i was in the middle of reading black beauty. a wonderful book about a horse which had chapters of the horse

in the war and i said to my father i really worried about the horses in the war and my father said actually there were horses but it's a clear memory. i suppose that meant so much to me and so loved the horses and that the duty, so i have a clear memory. i can remember the meeting -- i can remember my father saying down with mr. chamberlain and my mother saying that poor man he is only doing his best. absolutely male and female exchange. yes, so i remember of course they were sent out of london and my parents got divorced during

the war said it was a mixture of the war and domestic unhappiness being sent away from my mother. i was at school in the district with the french that was evacuated and on the fourth of july we had a tremendous -- this lesson was to be 1943 and i can remember the teacher's standing there as we sang and they had tears pouring down their cheeks. i had never seen a man cried before. and i thought -- i remembered a good deal with all the war and then when i was living with my mother we had an italian prisoner of war act can't and i used to take out my bicycle and they didn't seem like enemies at all. they were very friendly and they were allowed a great deal.

we were frightened of the german prisoners but it's all in the past. a lot of my french family were killed. but my french cousins had absolutely -- the change in europe is one of the best things that could have happened the french and the germans ended. >> host: who is michael? >> guest: he is a wonderful writer, he's my husband, too. he writes marvelous novels and he was a famous journalist that wrote a column in what was the guardian and then the observer. he writes plays and i suppose the most famous i remember him riding at and saying no one will ever put this on. no one will ever be yoel to write this play because you have

action and dialog and of course it was put on and it is active all over the world all over the time and wherever we go we meet people that say of course people have acted in the performances, too. so i've heard in so many languages to fall of the dialogue. but then also some serious plays and notably copenhagen -- i'm sorry. >> host: we will move on from that. we only have a few minutes left in it wanted to ask you how you found dorothea jordan. >> guest: i found her through the research i did giving it i

realized they came from a family of actresses and i became interested in the situation of the actresses in this society in the early 19th century that a group of women quite apart from the others they were sort of a despised as though they were prostitutes any way because they displayed themselves but they were also seen as models on stage to get the history complicated situation so i decided to write a book about actresses and i masked a great many files he said how are you getting on with that book and i said let me tell you about one of the actresses and i started talking about her and after a while he said just write about her because she had this amazing life she came from dublin and was pregnant by the first director and then she had three more children by another man and then she met the some of the

king and he was very nice to her and they became an item and she lived with him for 20 years and they lived in the house just outside of london and they had the grand children of the king. they went on acting and she was a perfect actress. she was as good at, yes tragedy and she was enormously popular. she was a very hard worker and a loving mother. and after her sons grew up and went to the army and the needy and then the royal family suddenly realized that they needed more because there was nobody to take over the throne, george iii, his daughter died in childbirth and they have only

these ten bastards come so they wouldn't do all they thought said he was married to a german princess but william for legitimate children died, and it was only the duke of york, his won daughter victoria who survived to take over the throne and mrs. jordan was cast aside. wretchedly she ended her days in paris. but her story is a really wonderful story so i enjoy doing that as all intelligent people are there are denigrated or four gotta lummis