Jenny Woolf

"Alice in Wonderland" was my favourite book. When I was a child, Wonderland's bossy people and its strange, wonderful and alarming surprises exactly reflected my own experience of life. I wanted even then to meet Lewis Carroll, this writer who seemed to understand the world of children so well.

When I grew up and read the biographies of Carroll, I just felt puzzled. He seemed ordinary, even weird and I couldn't square this with the person who must have written "Alice." So I began investigating him myself, to see if I could get a glimpse of who he'd really been. After all, he had eaten, bathed, blown his nose, smelt a rose, had feelings and a life of his own. THIS was the man I wanted to find

I was helped on my way by discovering his personal bank account, unseeen since his death. It was an amazing find, and my book "Lewis Carroll in his own Account" was the result. I made a BBC documentary about it. That paved the way for the biography, which I based on documented facts, his own writing and the recollections of the people who knew him personally. There is still more to discover, but the complicated, fascinating man who is Lewis Carroll now seems clearer. Published in 2010, the book has been updated on Kindle in 2015 and is available in the Kindle Store.

I live in South Hampstead, London, England.