Dickens on Radio 4

How exciting; there's a treat in store next week when one of my favourite actresses reads one of my favourite authors. Radio 4's Book of the Week is Claire Tomalin's new biography of Dickens read by Penelope Wilton who I have admired ever since seeing her in Cry Freedom in the 1980s (and who, of course, has recently played the feisty cousin Isabel in Downton Abbey).

The book group read Claire Tomalin's wonderfully researched and well executed biography of Thomas Hardy in February 2008 and I then went on to read her biographies of Jane Austen and Samuel Pepys (a particulalry wonderful book). The Dickens biography will certainly go on my "to read" list and it may even kick start my Dickens reading..... I'm ashamed to admit that I was defeated at my last attempt by Hard Times which was definitely not a book suited to a poolside setting in Thailand.