SOURCE: Scammell, William. “Sensibility and No Nonsense.” Spectator 283, no. 8940 (11 December 1999): 48-9.

In the following review, Scammell evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades.

‘What is it the best writers do? They infuse the world with their energy, making it more real, more immediate, more troubling than most of us can be bothered to notice most of the time.’ That firm answer to a large question is the penultimate sentence in this enjoyable collection of Claire Tomalin's essays and reviews [Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades], written for a variety of journals over three decades. She herself bothers to notice things in books and lives, especially the lives of gifted women. In the old days ‘the exchange that was imposed on every girl’ was ‘giving up economic freedom for sex and babies.’ Tomalin belongs to the generation that was determined to change all that...