Diary of an Ordinary Schoolgirl

The diary of an ordinary schoolgirl living in Carlisle in 1954 -- a perfectly preserved period piece from one of the UK's favourite novelists

The diary is slight, but very sweet. You would be pleased to find it in your Christmas stocking… Margaret is a good egg. You like her more and more… If you were happy at school, Forster’s diary will bring it all back. If you were unhappy, she will make you wistful for what you missed.

Unmissable: a neat  little green clothbound time machine

Funny, acute and revealing by turns... a tantalising, nostalgia-inducing glimpse into a young life and a lost world

A heady mix of bookish teenage passions and 1950s nostalgia

Born in Carlisle, Margaret Forster was the author of many successful and acclaimed novels, including Have the Men Had Enough?, Lady's Maid, Diary of an Ordinary Woman, Is There Anything You Want? , Keeping the World Away, Over and The Unknown Bridesmaid. She also wrote bestselling memoirs – Hidden Lives, Precious Lives and, most recently, My Life in Houses – and biographies. She was married to writer and journalist Hunter Davies and lived in London and the Lake District. She died in February 2016, just before her last novel, How to Measure a Cow, was published.

23 February 
Results rolling in! Algebra, 6th = 74%. Not bad. Latin = 55% Thrilled! History top = 85% smashing! Geography, disgusting, 2nd = 67%. 
 
In 1954 in Carlisle lived an ordinary 15-year-old schoolgirl called Margaret. She would go on to become an acclaimed writer, the author of the novels Georgy Girl and Diary of an Ordinary Woman as well as biographies and memoirs. But this is her diary from that year; her life. Hers might be a lost world, but her daily observations bring it back in vivid, irresistible detail. 
 
7 May 
Wonderful feat accomplished yesterday by Roger Bannister! At last, the 4 minute mile. Glad an Englishman got it before anyone else. 
 
24 July 
Bought a pair of shorts – white, very short with two pockets. Super but rather daring! 
 
2 September 
Mum’s coming back on Saturday. Miss her every minute! I'll never marry and have a family -- housekeeping for two for a week is bad enough -- but for life!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

'This is the most exciting sort of biography to read, or to write: the myth-dispelling biography which overturns an old story, and does so most convincingly' New Statesman

This is the most exciting sort of biography to read, or to write: the myth-dispelling biography which overturns an old story, and does so most convincingly'

If it is a test of a good biography to send the reader hot-foot to the subject's works, Margaret Forster's has succeeded triumphantly

This biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, written with reference to Browning correspondence only recently available, argues that the poet was a strong and determined woman largely responsible for her own incarceration in Wimpole Street. The author traces her life from her early childhood and adolescence and explores her marriage. She draws a picture of early Victorian family life and aims to show that Elizabeth was a considerable and dedicated poet, self-willed, witty and courageous. Forster has also edited the companion volume "Selected Poems" of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and is author of several other biographies.

How to Measure a Cow

The gripping final novel from the much-loved &amp; bestselling Margaret Forster

The work of a novelist in her prime… The narrative is taut and suspenseful, the characterization complex and dynamic.

Brilliantly drawn… Atmosphere and characters linger long after the novel ends

Deft, intriguing and gripping. Forster never disappoints.

This is Margaret Forster's last novel, sadly, and it's full of reminders of what made her such a shrewd and arresting chronicler of women’s lives

An exemplary final work … wonderfully well-observed

It is Forster’s acute scrutiny of the economy of friendship that hooks.

Her simple, direct prose never strikes a false note

Amply displays her formidable talent as a storyteller, undiminished to the end, and her marvellous ability to anatomise the lives of her characters while still enabling them to emerge fully realised in the reader’s imagination… The novel is a rich inquiry into the nature of friendship… Forster is, as ever, brilliant at the telling details that illuminate her characters’ inner lives… A fine last novel by an outstanding writer, it will disappoint neither longstanding admirers nor newcomers to Forster’s work. Above all, it is a novel about the abiding human need to love and to be loved, a need that Forster makes clear is beyond measurement.

Forster is very good at the slow reveal, gradually illuminating the more questionable aspects of Tara's character as well as the crime that changed her life. She's also brilliant on the complexities of ordinary people, particularly women: the little ways they deceive themselves, their quickness to judge and their clumsy determination to be kind

Margaret Forster writes the most amazing prose, tight without a superfluous word and still with the ability to convey crystal clear images to the reader… She weaves loyalty, betrayal, friendship, honour and honesty with wonderful characterisation into an absorbing story.

Characters are cleverly drawn and the north/south divide well depicted

Margaret Forster…excelled at writing about complex relationships between women… Forster’s skill is to show how very different characters shift and develop according to what life throws at them.

A more nuanced take on the potential recuperative powers of the rural environment than many others novels written in this vein.

The first five chapters of Forester’s novel are a remarkable exercise in withholding and revelation by minute increments… There is much in it to admire, from the distinctive resonance of her deceptively plain style to her descriptions of landscape.

Margaret Forster is excellent at painting the picture and her dialogue is always A1.

‘Compelling…taut and suspenseful’ Guardian 
 
Tara Fraser has a secret. 
 
Desperate to escape herself and her past, she changes her name, packs up her London home and moves to a town in the North of England where she knows no one. 
 
But one of her new neighbours, Nancy, is intrigued by her. And as hard as Tara tries to distance herself, she starts to drop her guard. 
 
Then a letter arrives. An old friend wants to meet up. Struggling to keep her old life at bay, Tara soon discovers the dangers of fighting the past.

A Family and Their Times 1831-1931

Rich Desserts and Captain's Thin

In 1831 John Dodgson Carr, son of a Quaker grocer, set off to walk from his home in Kendal to Carlisle, determined to launch a great enterprise. Within 15 years, Carr's of Carlisle had become one of the largest baking businesses in the world -and is a by-word for biscuits to this day. Following his trail to Carlisle (where she herself was born and grew up), Margaret Forster brings 19th-century daily life into vivid focus and charts the rise and rise of a middle-class family like the Carrs, ambitious, innovative yet sternly religious. This is history as it was lived by the men and women both above and below stairs - from the shop floor to the comfortable bourgeois homes of the paternalistic Carrs. We see the conflict between religion and profit, the family feuds and the changing face of a city through this compelling historical narrative, told with Margaret Forster's characteristic blend of scholarship, readability and marvellous attention to the texture of everyday life.

My Life in Houses

I was truly moved by Margaret Forster's ingeniously structured and beautifully written memoir... A really wonderful book

A beautiful exploration of her life in relation to the homes she has made'

Such a clever idea. It's a memoir sited in bricks and mortar... social and personal history spliced together

Until its shocking, throat-catching end, this latest book is a deceptively simple trek evoking everywhere [Margaret Forster] has lived

Reads like one of Forster's well-loved novels: full of sharp observation and gentle wit

In both books and homes, we find wry humour and a great deal of poignancy

Like sitting down for tea with a highly intelligent woman and chatting, not so much about "a room of one's own" as "a home of one's own"... fascinating and touching

This is a lovely and touching evocation of what home means to one woman, and within this is a universality that many will connect with

A meditation on our emotional connection with houses, it is also a perceptive portrayal of changing domestic life in 20th and 21st-century Britain

A wonderful, and affecting book about what makes a home, and the effect where we live has on how we live our lives

An enthralling account of her relationship with the houses she has loved... I think many people reading it will respond -- as I did -- to her very personal bond with the houses she has occupied, changed and drawn comfort from... and it is so movingly honest

Virginia Nicholson, author of SINGLED OUT

Even if you’re not familiar with Forster’s novels, you’ll love the nostalgic trawl through seven houses over 70-odd years

This is the quietest and gentlest of autobiographies

[Forster] is a compassionate notice, she doesn’t give in to nostalgia, and she captures beautifully in this wise, observant book a life and a world

Quietly compelling, straightforward but profound, this book is an unsentimental but affecting life story with a difference. Highly recommended

A powerful memoir… [Forster] evokes the idea of the human body as a home beautifully

This beautiful and profound book is not so much about a passion for - or indeed the occasional aversion to - a series of places, but an exquisite personification, an exploration of a relationship that alters just as all human relationships do, sometimes intense, sometimes disappointing, often reassuring and above all providing protection, continuity and occasionally a means of survival.

My Life in Houses…is warm, direct, beautifully written and described without self-pity her struggle with the cancer that killed her. She was a writer of rare talent.

Lovely, unsentimental memoir… An extraordinarily effective way of conveying just how much stuff, both physical and emotional, a life contains.

This author has given us many good books in her lifetime. The final chapters of this one are very emotional as she was obviously aware that her illness was getting progressively worse. A gentle, thoughtful and moving book.

A gently insistent, personal inquiry into the meaning of home.

A wonderful backwards glance at the changing nature of our accommodation… A gently insistent, personal inquiry into the meaning of home.

‘I was born on 25th May, 1938, in the front bedroom of a house in Orton Road, a house on the outer edges of Raffles, a council estate. I was a lucky girl.’ 
 
So begins Margaret Forster’s journey through the houses she’s lived in, from that sparkling new council house, to her beloved London home of today. This is not a book about bricks and mortar though. This is a book about what houses are to us, the effect they have on the way we live our lives and the changing nature of our homes: from blacking grates and outside privies; to cities dominated by bedsits and lodgings; to the houses of today converted back into single dwellings. Finally, it is a gently insistent, personal inquiry into the meaning of home.

The Unknown Bridesmaid

A dark and compelling story of family secrets and self-discovery from the author of Diary of an Ordinary Woman and Shadow Baby

Nobody  is better than Margaret Forster, with her clear calm prose, at  delineating the fault lines of the ordinary, unexceptional and hidden  lives

Makes such uncomfortable reading that at times you can barely turn the page, but it’s so compelling that you have to

Perfectly paced and with superbly drawn characters, this is a compelling story skilfully told

Margaret Forster is a brilliant and prolific writer... her latest novel is one of her best… It's a gripping read

Margaret Forster is a brilliant and prolific writer... her latest novel is one of her best... The book it most reminded me of, curiously enough, was Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending... Barnes, of course, won the Booker for his novel. I hope that Margaret Forster gets the recognition she deserves for this one

There is no one to match [Forster] for the way her assured,subtle and careful prose can detail the insecurities, torments and problems of what are, to all surface appearances, just nondescript, unremarkable and often half-lived lives

Margaret Forster has a deft and idiosyncratic touch

A story which becomes steadily more gripping

A brilliantly uncomfortable read about the art of forgetfulness

Brilliant... You won't put this book down until its emotional end

Only one person knows what happened that day… 
 
 
 
Julia was the only person who knew what happened that day. 
 
But she didn’t tell the police. And then it was too late. 
 
Now, years later, her secret looms large. 
 
Is it really too late? And if she does tell, can she bear the consequences?

Lady's Maid

'Compulsively readable' - Guardian

From the viewpoint of Elizabeth Wilson... lady's maid, Margaret Forster retells the love story of Robert and Elizabeth Browning...Enthralling

Compulsively readable... at each climax of the story, from the Browning's runaway romance to her own equally compromised and complicated marriage, the lady's maid speaks directly and at the last most movingly

Passion, melodrama, pathos - and a happy ending. What more can you ask for?

Movingly told... Wilson's pleasures, losses and disappointments in love are complicated and excellently understated, imagined as a contrast to the grand passions she has to serve

Accomplished, beautifully written... packed with discreet domestic detail

Fact and fiction are skilfully interwoven-beautifully done

London 1844, and a shy young woman has arrived to take up a new position in the grandeur of No. 50, Wimpole Street. Subtly and compellingly, Lady's Maid gives voice to Elizabeth Wilson's untold story, her complex relationship with her mistress, Elizabeth Barrett, and her dramatic role in the most famous elopement in history.

Over

Margaret Forster writes fiction that is profoundlly real, rooted in the everyday experience of apparently ordinary lives that have been twisted out of shape by the messy business of living. Like Carol Shields' Unless, this novel takes a merciless, heartbreaking look at a mother's anguish.

Forster's tightly-focused, first-person narrative is utterly compelling and painfully convincing

Forster's first person account of Lou's emotional exhaustion, her bleached anger at the ruthless egotism of her husband's grief, and her inability to discern the same essential failing in her own bitter self protectiveness is an impressive feat of observation and imagination

Forster's scrupulous inspection of the clammy and repressive intricacies of domestic life is, as in so much of her discomforting fiction, a serious pleasure to read

Superb... Forster understands the power of that left unsaid... an ordinary woman's story is made heroic by a writer's art

Over is a relentless, exacting novel that pushes into the heart of grief and suggests some narrow routes to recovery

Margaret Forster once again proves her ability to get under the skin of her characters

Over is a gripping page-turner... a hauntingly rewarding read

Each sentence is sculpted to perfection. Like so many of Forster's novels, it leaves behind a sense of something both absent and profound

Don and Louise's eighteen-year-old daughter Miranda has died in a sailing accident. While Louise takes steps to move on with her life, Don cannot come to terms with the chain of events that led to her death. Instead, he is determined to bring someone to account. The surviving children handle the loss of their sister better than their parents, but what they can't handle is their family being torn apart... 
 
Taut, heartbreaking and immensely moving, Over is a novel about love and loss, grief and hope, pain and resolution, and about what happens to human beings when tragedy strikes like lightening.

Shadow Baby

A powerful, moving story about motherhood, abandonment and guilt which casts a shadow across generations.

A brilliant exploration of choice and consequence

Enthralling... readers will plunge happily into the kind of family story for which Margaret Foster is celebrated and which she executes so well

An unfailingly intelligent novel, full of lucid observation of a phenomenon, mother-love, too often seen through a gilded haze of false feeling and wishful thinking... Forster is a fine storyteller

An excellently funny, moving novel... a text for our times

Born in Carlisle in 1887, brought up in a children's home and by reluctant relatives, Evie, with her wild hair and unassuming ways, seems a quiet, undemanding child. 
 
Shona, born almost seventy years later, is headstrong and striking. She grows up in comfort and security in Scotland, the only child of doting parents. But there are, as she discovers, unanswered questions about her past. 
 
The two girls have only one thing in common: both were abandoned as babies by their mothers. Different times, different circumstances, but these two girls grow up sharing the same obsession. Each sets out to stalk and then haunt her natural mother. Both mothers dread disclosure; both daughters seek emotional compensation and, ultimately, revenge.

The Memory Box

A powerful, dramatic and disturbing novel about the long shadow cast by the memory of a dead mother on the life of her daughter - another brilliant exploration of family mythology and guilt from a novelist who reigns supreme in this territory.

Moving, thought-provoking and utterly compelling, this novel is Margaret Forster at her very best

Like memory itself, it is subtle, full of secrets, and it lingers

A compulsive read, beautifully written... with the same talent she displayed so brilliantly in Hidden Lives

Deft, unusual and very readable... Margaret Forster has again written a vivid and compulsive novel

Catherine's mother died when Catherine was just a baby girl, leaving nothing but her perfect reputation to live up to. Or so she thought. But then Catherine finds a box addressed to her, filled with objects seemingly without meaning - three feathers, an exotic seashell, a painting, a mirror, two prints, an address book, a map, a hat, a rucksack and a necklace. 
 
And while she's busy playing detective trying to find out who her mother was, she finds out more about herself than she ever really wanted to know. Secrets are discovered, truths uncovered, and Catherine realises that maybe there was something more to her mother, something that her familiy has kept from her. 
 
How long a shadow can a dead woman cast?

Isa and May

An engaging, intriguing novel which will appeal straight to Margaret Forster's heartland, about a young woman, her two very different grandmothers, Isa and May, and the secrets that families keep.

Margaret Forster has always had the enviable gift of making her characters spring to life, and both Isa and May do just that

A deliciously observed, dilemma-and-drama-packed read

A compelling story, sometimes funny, sometimes painfully sad... All family life is here, messy, insistent and, as the author convincingly shows, as essential as breathing

A sensitive and intelligent novel with passages of beautifully modulated pathos, while being in part, hugely funny

[Forster] has written so brilliantly about female relationships...she can encapsulate a whole scene in a single sentence... [A] whole rich, fascinating novel

Margaret Forster's professional skills and accomplishment are to the fore, as usual

In a classic Forster novel about class and generational upheaval, here the author writes tenderly about the influence of grandmothers and their desire, as Sand put it, to "stuff" their grandchildren "with happiness"

Captivating... Like a beloved granny's visit, we're a little bit sorry to see the end approaching

This rich novel, full of pathos, concerns the unbridgeable gaps between generations

Isamay's unusual name comes from her two very different grandmothers, Isa and May, who were both present at her birth and who have both formed and influenced her whole life in very particular ways. Now almost thirty, Isamay is trying to write a thesis about grandmothers in history but is instead constantly ambushed by the startling secrets her own family has been keeping. When disturbing truths are revealed that force Isamay to examine her own certainties, will her grandmothers be able to build a bridge across the generations?

Daphne Du Maurier

A meticulously researched bestseller; a masterpiece of biography and storytelling about one of Britain’s best female authors. du Maurier’s books were adapted into some of Hitchcock’s most successful films, yet little is known about her private life. In this definitive book about the author of The Birds and Rebecca, readers are granted an insight into the life of a great, psychologically complex woman.

Altogether a model biography - human sympathy tempered with honesty and spiced with real intelligence

Convincing throughout ... Margaret Forster's interpretation of her subject is so complete and so persuasive that it leaves nothing for the reader to do except admire and enjoy

Forster's acute and sensitive book succeeds on many levels ... Its most important achievement is to disprove the highbrow assumption that bestsellers are shallow ... and do not ... engage the depths of the psyche

Margaret Forster can do no wrong ... The story is as gripping as Rebecca, as full of surprises as My Cousin Rachel ... affectionate, honest, unsentimental and perceptive

It is an enthralling story, expertly and sympathetically told

The definitive biography of Daphne Du Maurier, one of history's greatest psychological thriller novelists 
 
Rebecca, published in 1938, brought its author instant international acclaim, capturing the popular imagination with its haunting atmosphere of suspense and mystery. Du Maurier was immediately established as the queen of the psychological thriller. But the more fame this and her other books encouraged, the more reclusive Daphne du Maurier became. 
 
Margaret Forster's award-winning biography could hardly be more worthy of its subject. Drawing on private letters and papers, and with the unflinching co-operation of Daphne du Maurier's family, Margaret Forster explores the secret drama of her life - the stifling relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier; her troubled marriage to war hero and royal aide, 'Boy' Browning; her wartime love affair; her passion for Cornwall and her deep friendships with the last of her father's actress loves, Gertrude Lawrence, and with an aristocratic American woman. 
 
Most significant of all, Margaret Forster ingeniously strips away the relaxed and charming facade to lay bare the true workings of a complex and emotional character whose passionate and often violent stories mirrored her own fantasy life more than anyone could ever have imagined.

Keeping the World Away

'Forster-lovers will not be disappointed by her depiction of a cornered creativity and its persisting power to subvert and enchant' - Sally Vickers, Guardian

Forster's style is easy and unpretentious. In a brief paragraph she can create a character we care about, a story we long to see resolved

Few authors share Margaret Forster's extraordinary ability to transform the ordinary day-to-day activities of unremarkable people into compelling fiction

A fine novel... an inspired reflection on the redemptive potential of art

The characters are fully developed and differentiated...there is harrowing emotional insight; it also contains elements of real comedy

Her historical skills are, as always, matched by her marvellous empathy... A finely crafted novel

A skilful, apparently simple tale is unostentatiously styled to disguise its artificiality and this writer's artful adaption, but not contradiction, of historical facts

Lost, found, stolen, strayed, sold, fought over... This engrossing, beautifully crafted novel follows the fictional adventures, over a hundred years, of an early 20th-century painting and the women whose lives it touches. 
 
It opens with bold, passionate Gwen, struggling to be an artist, leaving for Paris where she becomes Rodin's lover and paints a small, intimate picture of a quiet corner of her attic room. 
 
Then there's Charlotte, a dreamy intellectual Edwardian girl, and Stella, Lucasta, Ailsa and finally young Gillian, who share an unspoken desire to have for themselves a tranquil golden place like that in the painting. 
 
Quintessential Forster, this is a novel about women's lives, about what it means and what it costs to be both a woman and an artist, and an unusual, compelling look at a beautiful painting and its imagined afterlife.

Is There Anything You Want?

A characteristically compelling, clear-eyed, humane and heartbreaking novel about a taboo subject - and about what it feels like to be a survivor...

Few authors share Margaret Forster's extraordinary ability to transform the ordinary day-to-day activities of unremarkable people into compelling fiction... Written with brilliant and exquisite sensitivity

Written with enormous sensitivity and compassion

The kind of novel into which you plunge with satisfaction

Written with insight, wit and tremendous style

Forster's empathy and lack of sentimentality, as well as her quick ear and eye for the telling detail, command attention, while her skills as a storyteller ensure the reader's avid curiosity about what happens next

Forster excels at depicting ordinary lives.Beautifully controlled

Forster's prose, is, as always, clear, robust and unpretentious

Interweaves a variety of thoroughly imagined life stories and predicaments with quiet, effective skill

I have greater admiration for Margaret Forster than for most novelists. A very fine, continuously interesting, and often moving work, all the better because it is so firmly rooted in the ordinary world of everyday experience

What do Mrs H., Rachel, Edwina, Ida, Sarah, Dot, Chrissie have in common? They're all women, but they're fat, thin, old, young, married or single - and appear as diverse as human nature can be. But they are all survivors. This enthralling novel follows the ripples that go out into ordinary lives that have been changed by a shared experience, all connected by the same hospital clinic in a small Northern town. 
 
This is a novel about what it means to live in the shadow of disease, and with scars, whether mental or physical. From the marvellous ambivalence of the title question, it leaves us with a whole lot more to consider about life and its infinite variety.

Georgy Girl

'Almost uncannily readable' Sunday Times

The book moves along at a funny, extremely enjoyable speed in step with Georgy's restless energy, sometimes verging on the farcical, and always contained just this side of pathos

Forster is remarkably honest, skilful and perceptive

Forster has that rare ability to step into another's shoes

Georgy is young, gregarious and fun - she is also large, self-confessedly ugly and desperate for love. Georgy bears her fate bravely as she alternates between playing the fool and humbling herself before Meredith, her pretty, callous flatmate, although when James, middle-aged socialite and self-imposed 'Uncle', asks Georgy to become his mistress, she is tempted to accept. Then Meredith announces that she is pregnant and Jos, the expectant father, decides he is in love with Georgy...

Mothers' Boys

'The story unfolds with striking authenticity and perception... sensitive and gripping' - Daily Telegraph

Margaret Forster has the gift of making you care deeply about what happens to her characters

How does it feel to be the mother of a juvenile thug? Or the mother of that thug's hapless victim? It is the pain of such mothers that Margaret Forster explores most brilliantly in her dark, harrowing and extremely topical novel

Margaret Forster has a remarkable gift for taking huge social issues and welding them into minutely observed human dramas that are perfect portraits of the way we live now...The story grips and the heart bleeds for these good mothers who are, like all mothers, never good enough

The attack on fifteen-year-old Joe Kennedy was particularly squalid and vicious. Sheila Armstrong's grandson Leo, usually a quiet, well-behaved boy, was found holding a knife. Harriet Kennedy cannot cope with her son's continuing pain; Sheila, who reared Leo, cannot bear the lasting guilt. In a powerful and moving tale of suffering and forgiveness, the two women confront the complex range of emotions that motherhood entails.

The Battle For Christabel

'Wonderfully rich... Nobody explores the way we live with more intelligence, art or humanity than she does' - Scotsman

As the characters battle for possession of Christabel, Margaret Forster catches every note and nuance of good intention, misplaced motive and downright selfishness-a remarkable achievement

Forster has the essential capacity to see everyone's point of view... In that territory of dread and reconciliation which is the family, Forster reigns supreme

Motherhood is taken out, held up to the light and given a vigorous shaking-a book with impact

Poignant, impeccably written-especially heart-rending because it is so believable

Rowena wants a baby. What she doesn't want is the baby's father. Yet five years after the birth of Christabel, Rowena is dead, tragically killed in a climbing accident. The battle for Christabel has begun... 
 
With signature skill, Margaret Forster reveals the conflicting personal interests that lie behind each character’s claim on the child. Drawn from the perspectives of social workers, grandparents, lovers and foster-mothers, this novel is a remarkable and heartfelt exploration of the complexities of motherhood.

Private Papers

'This stuff of intimate family life is brilliantly presented, subtly and yet with unnerving directness' Susan Hill

A brilliant, sometimes terrible novel about the generation war within a family, as witty and cool as it is heart-rending

Painful...gripping...her "private" story reaches far beyond the merely personal

To Penelope Butler the family was all, the sole ambition of her adult life. Three of her four daughters, however, had different ideas. Rosemary rejected it; Jess was destroyed by it; Celia found it eluded her. Only Emily pursued her mother's ideal, with disastrous results. 
 
Penelope begins to record their family story as it unfolds. But when Rosemary discovers these private papers she is enraged by her mother's distortions of the truth and proceeds to tell the story from her perspective. From D-Day on into the turbulent post-war years, a picture emerges not only of a single family in all its complexities, but also of the changing world that shaped their lives.

The Grassroots of Active Feminism, 1839-1939

Significant Sisters

'A compulsively readable account' A. S. Byatt, The Times

Margaret Forster is alive to the debt we owe to such champions, who made our world so much more hospitable to women

Margaret Forster writes history with a novelist's eye for details and is interested in the contradictions and conflicts in her heroines' attitudes to their own femininity

Eight women who changed the world 
 
Caroline Norton * Elizabeth Blackwell * Florence Nightingale * Emily Davies * Josephine Butler * Elizabeth Cady Stanton * Margaret Sanger * Emma Goldman 
 
Significant Sisters traces the lives of eight women, each of whom pioneered vital changes in the spheres of law, education, the professions, morals or politics: the first woman doctor, the pioneer of birth control, a radical journalist, and suffragists. Each forged her own particular brand of feminism, yet all fought bravely to make real, lasting difference to women's lives, and make us redefine our own notions of feminism today.

Have The Men Had Enough?

'An excellently funny, moving novel...a text for our times' Independent

A moving story, a condemnation of the way we treat our old friends and loves, a rage against the dying of the light

A novel painfully full of feeling, and totally credible-the passion shines through

A memorably touching story about the pressures on a family trying to do their best... A wonderfully accurate, powerful and even funny portrait

It is close to life in a way we hardly expect a novel to be, and finally very moving

An extremely skilful and angry novel...beautifully written

What do men run away from? Not war, not physical hardship, but the day-to-day emotional demands of impossible domestic situations. That's women's work. This is a story of female courage, where black comedy turns to disturbing pathos revolving around the rights of an indomitable woman

Margaret Forster

Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up, coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women's lives from the First World War to Greenham Common and beyond. 
 
This is the &lsquo;edited&rsquo; diary of an individual woman, born in 1901, and a story of the twentieth century. On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins keeping her journal, vividly recording the drama of everyday life. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s, through social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London, this is a story both fictional and true. Full of the texture of life, beautifully observed and evocative, it tells the story of an ordinary woman&rsquo;s life against the huge canvas of the last century. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

Margaret Forster

Books by Margaret Forster

Series by Margaret Forster

Against War

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