CLAIRE TOMALIN: ‘WE WERE IN THE CAR AND HE JUST HIT ME…WE HAD A STORMY MARRIAGE BUT GOODNESS, I DID LOVE HIM’

It will come as sad news for Claire Tomalin’s many readers, but her latest book will, she says, probably be the final chapter in her life as an author. I am talking to the award-winning writer on the eve of the publication of her 10th biography, a spry study of HG Wells and I ask if she has settled on her next subject. She laughs.

“No, is the answer to that,” she says. “I’m 88. I think it’s likely to be the last book.”

Tomalin is one of the most celebrated biographers of her generation. Her subjects – almost all writers – have included Austen, Hardy and Dickens. Her debut, 1974’s The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft,