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A Life of My Own

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A Life of My Own

By: Claire Tomalin
Narrated by: Penelope Wilton
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About this listen

Penguin presents A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin, read by Dame Penelope Wilton.


As one of the best biographers of her generation, Claire Tomalin has written about great novelists and poets to huge success: now, she turns to look at her own life.

This enthralling memoir follows her through triumph and tragedy in about equal measure, from the disastrous marriage of her parents and the often difficult wartime childhood that followed, to her own marriage to the brilliant young journalist Nicholas Tomalin. When he was killed on assignment as a war correspondent she was left to bring up their four children - and at the same time make her own career.

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Critic Reviews

Tomalin knows how to tell a cracking story
A book that radiates intelligence, wit and insight
Tomalin is the nimblest of narrators
Claire Tomalin is the finest and most disinterested of biographers, because in her pages she has given Jane Austen her liberty (Hilary Mantel on 'Jane Austen')
Superb (Nick Hornby on 'Charles Dickens')
Tomalin is a most intelligent and sympathetic biographer... She writes well and wittily
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