CLAIRE TOMALIN worked in publishing and journalism for many years. She was literary editor first of the New Statesman and then the Sunday Times, before devoting herself to writing full time. She is the author of eight highly acclaimed biographies including Thomas Hardy, The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which was the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year. She lives in England with her husband, Michael Frayn.