Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner.
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.
The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny.
I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 12, and I read the whole works. Yes, I was precocious.
Throughout his life, Dickens cared passionately about orphans.
When dealing with a subject who is dead, you have this feeling of being God. You know who they're going to marry, when they're going to die. It's strange to feel so omniscient.
