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" Because my father is French, my first school was the Lycee Francais de Londres in Kensington. "

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" Dickens never joined a political party nor put forward a political programme. He was a writer who rightly saw his power as coming through his fiction. "

" I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40. "

" It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child. "

" I have been fascinated by Dickens worshippers who strenuously deny that he did anything wrong in relation to his wife, even though the record is clear that he did. "

" I was working at the 'Evening Standard' when I heard that there was a job going as deputy literary editor on the 'New Statesman.' I remember thinking, 'That's perfect.' It was three days a week, and I had children, but I could make that work - so I applied for it and got it. "

" It's an odd situation: I could not write about someone for whom I felt no affection or admiration. "

" Dickens was very practical and sensible. "

" I would like to have a more social life than I have. "

" I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am. "

" One of my most vivid memories of the mid-1950s is of crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the delightful young men who had been friends to both of us at Cambridge three years earlier. "

" Why do we read biography? Why do we choose to write it? Because we are human beings, programmed to be curious about other human beings, and to experience something of their lives. This has always been so - look at the Bible, crammed with biographies, very popular reading. "

" Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it. "

" All writers behave badly. All people behave badly. "

" Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans. "

" Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films. "

" Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor. "

" Everyone finds their own version of Charles Dickens. The child-victim, the irrepressibly ambitious young man, the reporter, the demonic worker, the tireless walker. The radical, the protector of orphans, helper of the needy, man of good works, the republican. The hater and the lover of America. The giver of parties, the magician, the traveler. "

" Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings. "

" As a young man, Dickens worked as a reporter in the House of Commons and hated it. He felt that all politicians spoke with the same voice. "

" My life was a sort of series of random disasters. "

" I'm usually convinced that what I'm working on is a total disaster. "

" Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner. "

" The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches or culture. It's a city rich in antiquity and early Christian treasures, and just endlessly fascinating. There's nowhere else like it. "

" When I wrote about Mary Wollstonecraft, I found that here she was, in the late 18th century, going to work for the 'Analytical Review.' What was the 'Analytical Review?' It was a magazine that dealt with politics and literature. "

" I belong to the Richmond Concert Society, who put on very good concerts. "

" Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians. "

" Writers often feel obliged to adopt some sort of public appearance. "

" I was very priggish as a child. I saved up for a book on medieval English nunneries, for which I was despised by my friends. "

" Dickens is always full of surprises. "

" The book doesn't end when you finish writing it. "