Claire Tomalin's acclaimed biography of Britain's great novelist paints a portrait of an extraordinarily complex man. Today's themes are his early successes as a writer, and new beginnings.

Claire Tomalin's acclaimed biography of the novelist who called himself the "inimitable" is being broadcast in the 150th year since his death. Here Tomalin paints a vivid portrait of the writer at work, his extraordinary energy allowing him to write at an intense rate. His personal life required almost as much energy, a husband, a father of ten and a man who enjoyed a busy social life, with evenings spent at the theatre among friends before returning home to write.

Claire Tomalin was literary editor of the The New Statesman and then the Sunday Times before becoming a full time writer. Her biographies are award winning. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, won the Whitbread First Book Award, and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self was Whitbread Book of the Year in 2002.

Read by Penelope Wilton

Abridged by Richard Hamilton

Produced by Elizabeth Allard.