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Hello and welcome to the Spectators Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the Literatured

The Spectator. And this week I'm very pleased to be joined by Claire Tomlin, whose new book is a biography,

it's a sort of part biography of H.G. Wells,

called The Young H.G. Wells Changing the world.

Claire, you've opted to do the first bit of H.G. Wells' life.

And if I'm reading it rightly,

that's because the old HG Wells wasn't much good.

Well, it's also because I'm so old, if I thought I might not live to do the second half.

I think that's a very pessimistic view of it. Wells' public image now, I think we probably

associate him mostly with those sort of science

fictional novels, like The War of the Worlds that, and great stories, yes. Exactly, these

fabulous sort of science fiction novels. But in the sort of Edwardian period, he was much more

than that, wasn't he?

I mean, he was seen as a sort of real political sage.

Yes, an exemplary socialist.

He wrote about how his socialism cost him a lot of money,

because there were so many things he had to give up to pursue the socialism, I think.

And could you talk a bit about his sort of childhood and his character?

Because he was very much a sort of self-made kind of character, wasn't he?

Absolutely. He came with poor parents. He had to struggle to escape from being apprenticed as a draper.

His mother's idea for her son, her three sons,

...