Thomas Hardy began his schooling in the year in which the ‘Communist Manifesto’ was published, and he lived to see the Russian Revolution Picture credit: Wikimedia Works of literature are often shaped ...

Works of literature are often shaped as much by their authors’ intentions as the times in which they are produced. Curiously, Thomas Hardy’s works have remained relevant through the ages. Critics ...

James Naughtie and readers talk to award winning biographer Claire Tomalin about her life of Thomas Hardy - The Time-Torn Man. Claire Tomalin is celebrated for her ability to create an intimacy of her ...

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter In 2006 I was working as a ...

On the menu of great literary lives, Thomas Hardy is a tough egg. Almost a century after his death, it’s hard to fully conjure, still less quite to comprehend, the spell his novels exerted over his ...

As I open Claire Tomalin's Thomas Hardy biography, I anticipate a good read. I'm an admirer of Tomalin's previous biographies (Jane Austen and Samuel Pepys, among them). I know the Penguin Press ...

The Monty Python sketch of Thomas Hardy writing “The Return of the Native” takes place inside a packed soccer stadium with an announcer providing play-by-play analysis of the author’s glacial writing ...

At the west end of the nave of Westminster Abbey is a monument to Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy. The Admiral is shown in Roman armour reclining on a sarcophagus and at his feet are putto weeping beside an ...