The Biographers’ Club is very sorry to report the death of Gillian Tindall, an active member for many years and an outstanding biographer and historian.
Gillian Tindall began her authorial career as a novelist, winning a Somerset Maugham award, but became better known for biographies such as her life of George Gissing, and for histories in which she explored the relationships between buildings, objects, time and memory. The House by the Thames (2006) is a history of one site through the ages. The Pulse Glass (2019) is a semi-autobiographical work about the resonances of particular objects, valuable or otherwise. Reviewing the latter in the Guardian, and evoking both Tindall’s authorial voice and her personality, Anthony Quinn wrote: ‘… one hears an austerity in her voice that repels any inclination to make friends with it. Beneath her historian’s fierce curiosity lies an obsessive, near-devotional spirit that puts the reader on guard.’ But Gillian Tindall was a friend to many, and will be widely missed.