A Life of My Own

In 1973, when noted biographer Tomalin (Charles Dickens, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy, Mary Wollstonecraft, etc.) learned that her first husband, Nick, had been killed while reporting in Israel, she found herself on her own with four children, one of them severely handicapped. Herself a child of a painful divorce, Tomalin had ignored her reservations and married Nick, despite his being a charming philander, unsuited for the commitments of marriage. Although the author was able to support her family by editing and reviewing for the New Statesman and Sunday Times and later through writing biographies, her personal life continued to bring challenges, especially caring for Tom who had spina bifida and coping with her middle daughter's severe depression and suicide. Throughout, Tomalin remains objective and never lapses into sentimentality, finding escape through reading and writing.