Claire Tomalin: 'Writing induces melancholy. You're alone, a hermit' | Interview
On the eve of her eagerly awaited life of Dickens, the grande dame of literary biography talks about seeing the world through the eyes of her subjects " and why the one remarkable life she is reluctant to write is her ownThanks to a childhood spent poking my nose through bannisters, I think of landings as places for eavesdropping, for the discovery of shocking adult secrets. So it seems appropriate that it is to a la…