RENOWNED author Claire Tomalin will be signing copies of her memoir ‘A Life of My Own’ when she visits Winchester Guildhall today.

The prolific writer, who has penned some nine biographies of the greats, including Shelley, Dickens and Jane Austen, has at last succumbed to writing her own life story which has aroused enormous interest in the national press.

A Guardian reviewer wrote: “You will find it hard not to be amazed, and impossible not to be moved, by the indomitable spirit that drives this memoir. It is, I should add, a hugely entertaining book.”

And The Times was equally enthusiastic: “She should be a heroine to modern snowflakes who melt at the first setback. Tomalin is like a glacier, unstoppable, inexorable, gathering grit and resolve as she goes. The book is poised and beautifully paced. She reels you in and casts you out.”

This will not surprise those who have heard her talking about her biographies of Pepys, Hardy and Dickens on previous visits to Winchester, but should whet the appetites of all those anxious to hear her discussing her memoir during a literary event at Winchester Guildhall, which starts at 6pm.

Putting the author in the hotseat will be Alresford author and TV and radio presenter John Miller, who has himself written a veritable bookshelf of biographies of the acting profession, including Sir John Gielgud and Dame Judi Dench.

Mr Miller has worked for the BBC, Television South, and UNESCO. His ITV series ‘Eye on the White House’ won the Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Grand Award at the New York International Film Festival. His 1978 series of BBC Radio 4 conversations with John Gielgud was adapted into a book with the same title, An Actor and his Time. He has written the authorised biographies of Ralph Richardson, Peter Ustinov and Judi Dench.

He devised and produced The Norfolk Connection, An Historical Entertainment on the Dukes of Norfolk and their relations with the Crown, which has been performed at festivals across the UK and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. For London’s Millennium String of Pearls celebrations, he wrote and produced Men in Scarlet, a Son et Lumiere history of the Chelsea Pensioners performed at the Royal Hospital.

Mr Miller was the artistic director of the Winchester Festival from its foundation in 1998 until 2011, he has been a regular guest contributor to other festivals at Arundel, Chichester, Cheltenham, Guildford and Salisbury, and has hosted a number of platforms with actors and writers at the RSC, the National Theatre, and the V&A Museum.

Tickets for Saturday’s event are available at claire-tomalin-in-conversation.eventbrite.co.uk. The evening is being supported by Dutton Gregory Solicitors, and is being held in aid of family support charity Home-Start Winchester.