Claire Tomalin Awarded Honorary Degree
Claire Tomalin, accomplished novelist, biographer and writer was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters (HonDLitt) by the University of Greenwich on Monday, October 23.
Her new book Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man has just been published.
The work covers Hardy's illegitimate birth, his rural upbringing, his escape to London in the 1860s, his marriages, his status as a bestselling novelist and, in later life, his supreme achievements as a poet.
Claire Tomalin’s biography, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (2002) won the Whitbread Book of the Year. It was commended by the judges as a “superb, humane and compassionate portrait”. It features many scenes of Greenwich and Deptford life, including the construction of early parts of Greenwich Hospital, now the site of the Old Royal Naval College where the University of Greenwich has its main campus. The book also won the Samuel Pepys Award. Ms Tomalin has also written acclaimed biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft (which was awarded the Whitbread First Book Prize) and Jane Austen.
Her account of Charles Dickens’ relationship with an actress, The Invisible Woman, won the NCR Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography. She edited the first edition of a previously undiscovered manuscript by Mary Shelley, Maurice, or The Fisher’s Cot and has published a collection of her book reviews and journalism, Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades. Other notable works include Mrs Jordan’s Profession, a biography of the actress Dora Jordan, consort to William IV.
Dr Jane Longmore, Head of the School of Humanities and eulogist at the ceremony says: “Her superb historical biographies cast new light on the hidden corners of past lives, allowing us to re-appraise literary figures as apparently familiar as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and, in her most recent book, Thomas Hardy”.
Claire Tomalin was joined by 100 graduating students from the university’s School of Humanities together with their families in the Chapel of St Peter and St Paul at the Old Royal Naval College. Her honorary doctorate was presented by the Rt Hon the Lord Holme of Cheltenham CBE, Chancellor of the University of Greenwich. Claire Tomalin wore a gown of blue and gold damask silk and a Tudor-style academic bonnet.
Honorary degrees are awarded to individuals of distinction who have made a major contribution to the work of the university, or who have earned prominence for activities associated more widely with education, business, culture, creative work and public service.
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Notes for Editors:
A scanned jpeg picture is available on request from the Press Office.
For further information, contact:
Nick Davison
Public Relations Unit
University of Greenwich
Tel: 020 8331 8092
Email: n.a.p.davison@gre.ac.uk