:00:00. > :00:00.On Meet the Author this week Jim Naughtie talks
:00:00. > :00:00.with the biographer Claire Tomalin about her new book ...
:00:07. > :00:10.Claire Tomalin is one of our great biographers.
:00:11. > :00:12.Her subjects have included Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen,
:00:13. > :00:15.Now she's done what many biographers don't do -
:00:16. > :00:19.A Life Of My Own, is her story, her family and her loves,
:00:20. > :00:22.the tragedies and joys in her life; the literary world in
:00:23. > :00:43.which she found her calling, her craft, welcome.
:00:44. > :00:45.Having spent so much time dealing with the detail
:00:46. > :00:47.of other people's lives, trying to sort out truths
:00:48. > :00:50.from falsehoods, was it difficult to take the plunge and hold a mirror
:00:51. > :00:59.I think it was the most difficult book I have ever tried to write.
:01:00. > :01:02.I found it very painful and I asked myself quite often,
:01:03. > :01:05.should I be doing this, shall I go on with it,
:01:06. > :01:13.There are a lot of tragedies in your life which we might
:01:14. > :01:16.touch on but as a whole, it's an extraordinary life,
:01:17. > :01:24.Because I had to address, really, really sad things that happened,
:01:25. > :01:31.particularly the death of my beloved and wonderful daughter, Susanna.
:01:32. > :01:45.I felt she was such a remarkable person.
:01:46. > :01:48.And I also feel that the care of depressed young people,
:01:49. > :01:51.we all know, it's not as good as it ought to be, and I suppose
:01:52. > :01:54.I blamed myself in a way, that I hadn't kept her alive.
:01:55. > :01:57.You had to deal with your feelings, you husband, Nick Tomlin,
:01:58. > :02:00.who was killed, in the Yum Kippur war, a terrible tragedy but you have
:02:01. > :02:03.had ups and downs of extraordinary kind during your marriage and it's
:02:04. > :02:12.But I saw, I learned something from it.
:02:13. > :02:16.I saw that first of all, probably I shouldn't have married him.
:02:17. > :02:18.We were great friends and lovers and we had fun together
:02:19. > :02:27.And every time he ran off with a blonde and I was left
:02:28. > :02:30.with the children it had a good effect on me, because I thought,
:02:31. > :02:33.I've got to cope, I've got make my life, I've got to get
:02:34. > :02:38.And if you look at my life, when I came to look,
:02:39. > :02:41.I saw that each time he did something really dreadful, I grew
:02:42. > :02:44.and progressed so that most sadly, I mean it was terrible
:02:45. > :02:52.when he was killed, but I had in a way been prepared to cope.
:02:53. > :02:54.And in dealing with your own feelings at the time,
:02:55. > :02:58.in the 50s when you were a student through the 60s the tumultuos 70s,
:02:59. > :03:00.Fleet Street, the literary world, it must be difficult to write
:03:01. > :03:04.about friends and friendships with real honesty?
:03:05. > :03:07.Well, I think my friendships with Terry Kilmartin who,
:03:08. > :03:12.was literary editor of the Observer, who was a wonderful friend to me,
:03:13. > :03:17.with Kyle Miller with Neil Atherton, with Michael Frane, who in the end
:03:18. > :03:22.became my husband but for many years was a friend to me,
:03:23. > :03:24.with Sarah foreman, who was at the Sunday Times,
:03:25. > :03:27.who I must not leave out, Marina Warner, Victoria Glendenning,
:03:28. > :03:29.who was a great friend, because we both had children,
:03:30. > :03:31.we were both making our way in the literally world
:03:32. > :03:44.You moved in that literally world of newspapers,
:03:45. > :03:49.magazines, the New Statesman, the Sunday Times, you became
:03:50. > :03:52.literally editor and in the late '60s and the 70s these
:03:53. > :03:54.were exhilarating times, in that world, weren't they?
:03:55. > :03:58.I had these brilliant friends and it was a very
:03:59. > :04:05.entertaining world to be part of, yes.
:04:06. > :04:07.And newspapers and magazines in those days, to an extent
:04:08. > :04:10.which I think it isn't there now, really cared about the original
:04:11. > :04:12.poetry, the job of the critic, about what the literary
:04:13. > :04:22.I thought to address literature and the arts seriously and write
:04:23. > :04:30.seriously about them and entertainingly,
:04:31. > :04:32.which he these very, very funny review vorax
:04:33. > :04:35.like the brilliant John Cary, I thought that was very important.
:04:36. > :04:38.And I thought each week, I must make my pages the best pages.
:04:39. > :04:40.There must be something on my pages, that everybody has to,
:04:41. > :04:43.people who don't usualally look at the book page, will want to read,
:04:44. > :04:50.In some ways, it's a book, in part of course,
:04:51. > :04:53.about your family, but also about what it was like in that era.
:04:54. > :04:56.Through the '60s when things opened up, when a sort of deferential
:04:57. > :04:57.social attitude gave way to something wilder
:04:58. > :05:09.I mean I put in the book, the moment in 1963,
:05:10. > :05:11.when I'd had my fourth baby, and I went to my gynaecologist
:05:12. > :05:15.and he leaned forward over the desk and held up a packet and said
:05:16. > :05:19.These are pills that will stop you getting pregnant."
:05:20. > :05:30.And I saw at that moment that things had changed between men and women.
:05:31. > :05:32.There's a great deal in the book about your growing affection
:05:33. > :05:34.for the English language, for literature, your discovery
:05:35. > :05:37.of Thomas Hardy, for example, whom you came to deal
:05:38. > :05:39.with as a biographer much later in life and the start
:05:40. > :05:49.of your journey into Samuel Pepys, and Mary Woolstonecraft of course.
:05:50. > :05:52.With Mary Woolstonecraft, I was 40 when I wrote that
:05:53. > :05:56.And I fell in love with the whole process with research and writing.
:05:57. > :06:00.And I realised at once that I had found my mitre.
:06:01. > :06:06.You can't earn your living from writing biographies.
:06:07. > :06:10.So I was very lucky to have the job at the Sunday Times and when I left
:06:11. > :06:13.the Sunday Times after Wapping in 1986 I was able then,
:06:14. > :06:17.in my 50s to start on my career as a writer and for the next 25
:06:18. > :06:19.years I wrote historical biographers and I was very,
:06:20. > :06:25.Well, there's an enormous amount of happiness in this book,
:06:26. > :06:27.despite all the ups and downs and indeed the tragedies,
:06:28. > :06:30.you seem to be somebody who is somehow able to cope
:06:31. > :06:37.Yes, well, that is true but you do have to cope.
:06:38. > :06:45.And I think I learned to cope a bit in childhood.
:06:46. > :06:49.I was a child who was disliked by my father and loved by my mother.
:06:50. > :06:52.And I had that curious experience as a small child of realising this,
:06:53. > :06:55.of being well aware that my father didn't like me, and that my
:06:56. > :07:00.mother was my supporter and the person who loved me.
:07:01. > :07:03.Your father was French and lived into his 90s.
:07:04. > :07:09.I think when he began to realise that I was a clever child.
:07:10. > :07:12.When he began to want to have a divorce from my mother,
:07:13. > :07:15.he spoke to the family doctor and said, you know,
:07:16. > :07:27.She said, "Well you don't need to worry about Claire,
:07:28. > :07:30.This had never occurred to my father.
:07:31. > :07:33.Very surprised when I got into Cambridge, very
:07:34. > :07:37.He said, "That's all very well, you need secretarial training."
:07:38. > :07:41.I mean at my wedding to Michael, when he was in his 90s
:07:42. > :07:44.to which he came, he said, "You never cease to
:07:45. > :07:48.I began by asking you how difficult it had been to decide to do this
:07:49. > :07:50.and to write honestly about your own life,
:07:51. > :07:53.the difficulties, the joys and the sadnesses, what was it
:07:54. > :07:56.like when you finish?ed what did you you feel when you finally sent
:07:57. > :08:05.I felt maybe I shouldn't plush this book and I hadn't
:08:06. > :08:10.And my very good editor, Anita Butterfield, wrote me
:08:11. > :08:13.a letter saying, "look, there are things you haven't said,
:08:14. > :08:16.there are things you haven't really said about writing your books
:08:17. > :08:28.I mean, when I was young, Andre Doitch said to me,
:08:29. > :08:31."You've had an interesting life, you should write a novel."
:08:32. > :08:36.but then I began to think but I have to a story to tell.
:08:37. > :08:43.Even if, I mean you have to deal with everything,
:08:44. > :08:46.an affair with Martin Amis, which everyone would notice.
:08:47. > :08:51.Well, it was an office romance and it was very short
:08:52. > :08:57.These are the things that make up a fascinating life.
:08:58. > :09:01.Claire Tomalin, author of A Life Of My Own,
:09:02. > :09:20.Latest live update and the focus will be on the hurricanes, we have
:09:21. > :09:21.three of