Claire Tomalin is one of our most distinguished literary biographers, winning the Whitbread Award for Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and many plaudits for her studies of, among others, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. Now she has written a new biography of perhaps our greatest novelist, Charles Dickens, in time for his bicentenary in 2012. Join us for this special event as Claire Tomalin uncovers and explores the complex life and writing of this truly iconic but contradictory literary figure.