IoS paperback review: Charles Dickens: A Life, By Claire Tomalin

In his centenary year, Dickens was brought to brilliant life by Claire Tomalin in this book.

Tomalin has been praised for her sensitive exploration of Dickens’s affair with the young actress Ellen “Nelly” Ternan, but there is so much more to discover in this rich, capacious biography. I especially enjoyed the raucous account of Dickens’s journey to North America in 1848, where he was greeted with the fervour nowadays associated with pop stars (5,000 New Yorkers applied for tickets to an extravagant welcoming party known simply as “Boz Ball”). Throughout the book, Tomalin treats her subject with just the right mixture of sympathy and detachment: one emerges with a fuller picture of the writer as a flawed and fleshy mortal, but also with an undiminished sense of his genius.

Most Shared
Most Commented

Get your summer started with British Military Fitness

BMF is the UK’s biggest and best loved outdoor fitness classes

Visit York Prizes & offers Business videos

Visit York

Find out what The Independent's resident travel expert has to say about one of the most beautiful small cities in the world

Military Fitness Prizes & offers Business videos

Enter the latest Independent competitions

Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.

Military Fitness Visit York Business videos

Business videos from commercial thought leaders

Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.

Military Fitness Visit York Prizes & offers

Masculinity in crisis?

'There is a battle going on inside us that is never discussed'

Have US shock jocks gone too far?

An incendiary remark from Rush Limbaugh may be the beginning of the end for outspoken right-wing US broadcasters

The ‘Beverly Hills’ of Surrey

Elmbridge pays more income tax than big cities of the North

Heavenly Bodies

Michael Landy's artistic marriage made in heaven... and hell

'He will always be a friend'

Jackie Stewart backs Roman Polanski

The price of pacifism

From the Second World War refusenik to the 19-year-old Israeli, Holly Williams talks to five people who risked shame and suffering to take a stand as conscientious objector.

'It was mass hysteria': Jason Isaacs on groupies, theatre bores and snogging James Bond

Jason Isaacs: Groupies, theatre bores and James Bond

To millions, Jason Isaacs is one of Harry Potter's arch enemies – but his wife prefers him as a Scottish TV detective.

Notes from a small island: Is Sealand an independent 'micronation' or an illegal fortress?

Sealand: 'Micronation' or illegal fortress?

Thomas Hodgkinson spent a week at the tiny platform off the Suffolk coast to find out.

Mark Hix cooks with cutlets and ribs

If you ignore cutlets and ribs, you'll risk missing out on some delicious and easy meals, says our chef.

The experts' guide to summer

From getting fit for the beach to recreating that Olympic buzz

Legend of James Hunt has set Hollywood hearts racing

Early glimpses of Ron Howard's film Rush suggest it will portray Hunt as a high-living lothario, with an insatiable appetite for partying.

Macklemore: 'I don't have moderation'

The next Vanilla Ice or the next Eminem? Macklemore doesn't have a record contract – but he does have the UK's biggest-selling single of the year.

Don't be shy: Bill Granger's Sri Lankan recipes

Sri Lankan cuisine is light, sunny, wonderfully spiced – and so easy to cook from scratch. Just as soon as you've broken into the coconut, that is.

Sir James Dyson’s latest project: Cleaning up hospitals

Doctors are hailing the revamp of a Bath neonatal unit, where babies sleep more and feed better, as the model for patient care

One man returns to Argentina's town that drowned

Epecuen was submerged under 10 metres of water in 1985. Now the floods have gone – and 83-year-old Pablo Novak has moved back in

Penguin £9.99